For this low-wage earner, a raise opens up opportunities

Juggling two low-wage jobs doesn’t leave Avianna Hudym with a lot of time on her hands.

She is a server at one small restaurant and washes dishes at a second.

Hudym is working a lot, but said she isn’t getting ahead and believes she’s going to be stuck in her wage bracket for a while.

“I don’t worry about it. I know it to be true. That’s probably where I’m going to be at for most of the rest of my life,” Hudym said. “The slow drip of economic anxiety is a real trip. It just always feels like you’re on the run.”

Hudym was among those who attended a rally in downtown Regina on Monday afternoon to draw attention to Saskatchewan’s minimum wage, which at $11.06 per hour, is the lowest in Canada.

A reference to Marie Antoinette’s famous words to “Let them eat cake.” (Joseph Ho/980 CJME)

They were calling for the government to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour, asking passersby to sign a petition to support their cause. As well, there was cake — because that’s what they feel like they’ve been told to eat in a reference to Marie Antoinette’s famous words.

Hudym, a fine arts graduate, said that she has other goals and dreams and that her motivation in life isn’t to make money. But in order to pursue them, that’s exactly what she needs.

“So much of my time is spent at my employment and having a higher minimum wage would mean having to spend less time doing that to earn my bread and pay my bills and more time making my local world a better place,” she said.

“I would be writing, I would be creating, I would be working more in community organizations.”

Organizers of the rally cite research from the progressive think tank Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, which says a person must make at least $16 per hour to avoid poverty in the province.

In October, Saskatchewan raised its minimum wage from $10.96 to $11.06 an hour. The government says reviews of wage changes are based on changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

The Retail Council of Canada has Alberta leading the country with the highest minimum wage, at $15 per hour, followed by Ontario at $14 per hour.

Saskatchewan’s minimum wage is at the bottom in the country. Nova Scotia has a wage of $11.05 for inexperienced workers but that gets bumped up to $11.55 after three months of work for the same employer.

Critics of minimum wage increases say they lead to unintended consequences that will hurt low-wage workers, including fewer jobs, cutting back work hours and driving employers toward automation. They also say it leads to higher prices on goods for consumers.

Saima Desai, a spokesperson for the event, points to Seattle as an example of the opposite happening. She said that, after Seattle raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour, there was actually job growth in low-wage sectors.

“When you have workers that are earning a living wage, that means your workers are happier and more productive. It really significantly decreases turnover so you spend less money on hiring, interviewing, training,” Desai said.

She also argues that increasing the minimum wage is good for the local economy as low-wage earners spend more of their money locally. But as a poverty-reduction strategy, Desai said, it’s not a “panacea.”

“What we also need to be fighting for is a better general social security net for people who are working, for people who are not working, for people who are disabled,” she said.

“I do think there needs to be a breadth of different alternatives that will help provide the basics for people who are living in poverty.”