Living wage in Hamilton now $17.20 an hour, groups estimate
CBC
After three-and-a-half years of helping customers, folding clothes and cleaning while working at Jack & Jones, 22-year-old McMaster student Aya Younis got her first raise.
Last year, her pay went from around $14 an hour, then the provincial minimum wage, to $15.
But she says that still isn't enough and that many others living in Hamilton — at least 30,000, according to Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction — continue to earn less than what Younis and others say is needed.
"It's super precarious... Not a lot of places even offer a living wage, so I haven't found it useful to really look around," she told CBC Hamilton on Monday.
"I go to work feeling a load of stress ... I can't explain much more how important it is."
Younis is among a growing number of voices calling for Hamilton businesses to pay their workers a living wage — a wage that is steadily rising, according to the Ontario Living Wage Network.
The network says a living wage is the hourly pay workers need to make ends meet and participate in their community (such as eating at a restaurant once a month). It varies based on where you live.
"It's not just being able to buy a potato and balance precariously on the edge of life, but to participate fully," Deirdre Pike from the Social Planning and Research Council of Hamilton told reporters during a Monday morning media conference that announced a newly calculated living wage in Hamilton.
"Minimum wage does not reflect the cost of living ... jobs that don't add up to a route out of poverty are keeping people languishing."
Provincial minimum wage is currently $14.35 an hour. The province is expected Tuesday to announce that will increase to $15 an hour in 2022. Yet even in 2019, Hamilton's living wage was estimated at $16.45. Now, the network says, it's $17.20.
The city is one of 23 living wage calculations the network updated and released this week. Toronto, at the highest, is $22.08 an hour. The Niagara region living wage is $18.90.
The wage is generally based on what two people with full-time jobs and two kids need to support themselves, but this year Pike said single adults are now most representative of people between 18 and 65-years-old.
Tom Cooper, Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction's executive director, says $17.20 is the bare minimum for Hamilton, because the calculation doesn't include money for paying off debts or any savings.
"We don't think any employer in Hamilton should be paying less than a living wage," he said in an interview.
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