Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to today's episode of Red Eye. I'm Jane Williams. On the podcast today, the living wage in Metro Vancouver has risen to $25 .68 an hour amid soaring costs. Laurentianism speaks with economist Iglica Ivanova.
Speaker: Working for a Living Wage is a report that measures how much a family needs to earn to afford the necessities of life in Metro Vancouver. Iglika Ivanova is one of the authors of this report. She's a senior economist and the public interest researcher at the CCPA BC. And Iglika joins me today to talk about a living wage. Hello, Iglika. Hi, Lorraine. Thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me on the show.
Speaker: Now you based your calculations on the needs of a two parent family with two young children in Metro Vancouver in 2023. How much does each adult need to earn?
Speaker: So according to our calculation, each adult needs to earn 2568 an hour in order to make ends meet in Metro Vancouver. That's quite a bit, and I take it it's a big increase from previous years.
Speaker: That is quite a bit higher than the minimum wage, yes, it's almost $9 more than the current minimum wage in our province. It is a 6 .6 % increase from last year, so a little bit higher than inflation, but in the last
Speaker: couple of years, we have had very rapid increases in the costs of the basics. In particular, the costs of shelter and the costs of food, those increases have been, you know, higher than the general inflation. And so we are seeing this reflected in the living wage calculation.
Speaker: What goes into that calculation? How do you come up with that per hour amount? We are essentially costing a basket of basic items that people need to live, like food and rent, transportation.
Speaker: It just, it covers the cost of essentials and it deducts the taxes, income taxes and, you know, CPP and EI premiums that people have to pay, but it takes into account all the benefits that one might receive from the provincial or federal government.
Speaker: So we're trying to get to a place where after taxes and benefits, workers are able to cover the costs of living in their particular community. In this case, Metro Vancouver. So what do you include beyond the absolute bare necessities of food, rent, that kind of thing?
Speaker: Well, we cost a budget for families. So we also include the costs of childcare. We include the costs of clothing and footwear, the costs of phone and internet, the costs of extended healthcare or healthcare services that are not covered by our public system. And we have
Speaker: some contingency allocations for people being sick beyond the five -day minimum that paid sick leave that all employees get in the province or losing a job. We also have a small budget for, you know, we call other expenses, but it's most basic recreation, you know, the ability to participate in community. It's more than recreation because recreation makes it sound like
Speaker: not really necessary, but what we're talking about is participating in the community so people can actually, you know, take advantage of the cultural attractions they met in Vancouver, go to the art gallery or afford to go to visit the museum exhibitions or take their children, in this case a family,
Speaker: to some activities. So we're talking about community participation, as well as just meeting the most basic material needs. Because what we want is a wage that allows people not just to survive and to stay alive, but to have actually a fulfilling life.
Speaker: and be able to participate in their communities. But I think it's really important to note that this is a bare bones budget and it does not include expenses that many people take for granted like paying off debt, making any savings for retirement or for children's education if you have children.
Speaker: or the cost of caring for an ill or disabled or elderly family member, which many of us have to bear as well. Yeah, which are, for most people, a reality. So beyond a very subsistence level, but not anything particularly cushy. Exactly. What's the impact on people and their families if they aren't able to meet these basic needs?
Speaker: If people and a lot of people aren't able to earn these wages, you essentially have two choices. One is half a second or third or fourth job and in order to actually make the cost of living. And the other one is go into debt or have to rely on food banks or risk losing your housing, the stress and
Speaker: anxiety that comes with not knowing whether you can continue paying your rent is really a leading cause of health care issues, I think, among a lot of low -wage workers. It's a real issue with real mental and physical health impacts, living in that kind of precarity or insecurity of low -wage workers.
Speaker: I mean, for sure it plugs right into the social determinants of health that we've all come to recognize as very important. Now in the last two years, the gap between the minimum wage and living wages in BC has grown significantly. You mentioned the gaps now almost $9 an hour. Who are the people who find themselves dealing with that gap? There's a lot of people.
Speaker: who are earning less than $25 an hour, $25 .68, the living wage in Metro Vancouver. And we all know they tend to be women. They tend to be racialized workers, a lot of recent immigrants and newcomers.
Speaker: Many young workers as well and workers who generally experience all sorts of, you know, marginalization and other challenges, whether that is because of, you know, their identity or their family status, single parents.
Speaker: are another group that generally tends to find themselves in those low -wage jobs. So we know that it is some of our most vulnerable workers, and I think it really is an issue that needs addressing the low wages in general, the low minimum wage in this province compared to the cost of living that really needs addressing.
Speaker: So Iglika, is the answer to increase the minimum wage? I mean, it's complicated, right? Just increasing the minimum wage alone is not enough because not everyone gets full -time hours. We need to be also looking at all sorts of other measures supporting people. For example, with food security, you know, governments have a lot of opportunity and we have seen some
Speaker: some steps in that direction of, you know, like trying to make an impact on housing costs, but we need much more affordable housing, much more ambitious build outs and affordable housing, and stronger renter protections. We need to also provide specific
Speaker: other supports to help people that we can think about whether it be making transit cheaper or more accessible, making transit free for more people. Right now it's free for children under 12.
Speaker: in metro Vancouver, but they should minimum be extended to age 18, but we deny of extending it to everyone. So just generally reducing the costs that people have to pay is what we need to be looking at, because the labor market alone can't solve all the challenges of insecurity and poverty. We need more than that. We need the government to really step in.
Speaker: So really a multi -pronged approach. Now, the city of Vancouver says it has a fair wage policy, but it only pays $21 .86 per hour. That's almost $4 less than the living wage you came up with. How does the city justify that as a
Speaker: fair wage? Yeah, that's a good question. And you should ask the city about that directly. The city of Vancouver became the largest employer to adopt the living wage in BC in 2017, when they got on board with the living wage and
Speaker: It was very exciting to see them interested in being part of the solution, BC's biggest municipality. But unfortunately, last year, as we know, they decided to shift and stop being a living wage employer. So now they're using a five -year average of the living wage to define
Speaker: their fair wage policy. So they are averaging the living wages over the last five years to get to $21 .86. But that means that a worker at that wage is going to be earning more than $7 ,000 a year less than if they actually earn the living wage for Metrobank. And the amount of money that they need to have a reasonable standard of living?
Speaker: Yeah, of course. I mean, we don't pay the five -year average of rent, right? Like when we are seeing rent prices go up, you can't ask your landlord to agree to accept the average over the last five years.
Speaker: That's, of course, silly. And the costs for people are increasing at a much faster pace. And we know, especially in the last two years, we have had such rapid increases in rent and food costs that I think it is very disappointing and shameful, frankly, to have the city of Vancouver claim that this is a fair wage.
Speaker: We talked about the role of employers and also of the municipal government, at least here in Vancouver. What about the two other levels of government? What can they be doing? What should they be doing? A lot of the policy levers for lowering the cost of living and improving the services available to all lie with the higher levels of government. So we need both the federal and the provincial levels of government to really
Speaker: step up their commitments to housing affordability. We need stronger regulations to protect renters. So one of the possible policies that we have identified is vacancy control. So eliminating the rent increases year to year, not just when the renter stays, but
Speaker: always, you know, so that renters moving out is not a license to just jack up rents, which is what we're seeing right now. So that's one thing that the provincial government can do, for example, but we also the federal government could be playing a much more active role around food affordability, you know, they made some efforts and investigated
Speaker: grocery prices over the last year, but the commitments they made as a result are very, very light and largely asking the grocery chains to do the right thing, which obviously is not working. And we need to see more action there from the federal government on ensuring
Speaker: food is affordable for people. I mean, we have some staggering increases in food bank use across the country. Over the last year, you know, food banks BC are reporting a 30 % increase in food bank use. That is alarming. And we're seeing that more and more people who need the food bank are actually working.
Speaker: And some of them are working full time. So we're in a position where people have jobs and that's not enough to cover the basics. And they think that's where governments really need to step up. Well, I really appreciate your shining a light on this concept for us and really important for us to keep our eyes on the ball here.
Speaker: Yeah, thank you for the opportunity to talk about that. I've been speaking with Iglika Ivanova, a senior economist and the public interest researcher at the CCPABC. She co -authored the report with Anastasia French, the provincial manager for living wage for families BC, and Tanya Oliveira, a researcher with the CCPABC. The event that Iglika is speaking at is on Monday.
Speaker: February 26, 7 .30pm at the Maritime Labor Center Auditorium, or you can attend via Zoom. And if you'd like to register, you can do so at the site for the Vancouver and District Labor Council, vdlc .ca. Look in the event section for the Living Wage Town Hall.
Speaker: The Red Eye Collective is based in Vancouver. You can check us out at coopradio .org slash redeye.
