New Brunswick’s minimum wage is going up to $11.25 on April 1, but will that make much of a difference for workers?
Jean-Claude Basque of the Common Front for Social Justice doesn’t think so.
“If employers want to keep the productivity level, if they want to keep people buying their products, they have to have more money in their pockets,” says Basque. “That will help workers, for sure, get out of poverty, but it will also help the economy.”
Basque says we’ve had about 18 different increases in the last 15 years, which have mostly followed inflation, but believes minimum wage workers in New Brunswick deserve better than that.
“Most of the time, they’re just barely catching up,” he says. “We see workers that are going to food banks, they have to rely on government subsidies, so in a sense with these low minimum wages, we’re subsidising employers.”
Basque says they’ve been pushing for an increase to $15 an hour in a four-year span, which is around what it takes to have a living wage.
“It means a wage where you’re able to afford a decent way of life for yourself, and especially if you have a family,” he says.