Vancouver Living Wage Improves, but Child Care Still a Huge Strain

In North America's most unaffordable city, Vancouver teacher Sara Langlois now spends more on child care for her 15-month-old daughter than she and her architect partner do on rent.

"Day care is our biggest expense monthly," the 32-year-old says. "I think people would expect us to be able to afford life basics, but in Vancouver that's actually difficult."

The East Vancouver family spends $1,453 on day care a month, totalling more than $17,000 a year, so they can both work.

The business of the living wage

Staff compensation packages can be a significant determining factor in the success of businesses.

According to workplace research, employees earning a fair deal on the job are more efficient, loyal to their bosses and less likely to get sick.

Kaylie Tiessen, national representative in the Unifor research department, says Canadian businesses hoping to improve the bottom line need to look at what's happening within their own employee base.

Can the Electronics Industry Provide a Living Wage? Not While Corporations Set the Rules

The phrase "living wage" has gained steam in recent years: Advocates argue that a wage level that allows for basic needs - plus a modicum of disposable income - is a human right, and failing to pay one is a violation of human rights. The concept has risen in popularity in recent years as evidence of poverty-level wages across a multitude of global industries has mounted, from agriculture, to textiles, to electronics and beyond. Struggles for a living wage are seen as a way to address poverty and inequality in locations where a legal minimum wage either does not exist, is not enforced or is insufficient to provide for a family.

Scott Walker Prepares To Sign Budget That Eliminates The Living Wage And Prevailing Wage

For months, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has said he won’t launch his long-expected run for the Republican nomination for President until he gets his own house in order and signs Wisconsin’s budget into law. Despite weeks of delays, he still may make that deadline before his planned announcement on July 13th.

Scott Walker Tries To Use A Back Door To Get Rid Of Wisconsin’s Living Wage Law

Only one hurdle stands between Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and his upcoming bid for the White House: passing a budget to keep his state chugging for the next two years.

After months of uproar over provisions to slash hundreds of millions of dollars from state universities and strip the values of “truth” and “service” from their mission, lawmakers in Madison missed their July 1 deadline to pass the budget.

Scott Walker Thinks $7.25 Is a Living Wage—He’s Wrong

Reasonable people may differ on the precise definition of a living wage. But the consensus is that $7.25 an hour does not come close to the standard for assuring that someone who works full time can earn enough to live above the poverty line.

Unfortunately, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s administration has formally rejected that consensus view and is now arguing that $7.25 an hour is a living wage.

Walker disdain for the minimum wage is well established. When a Wisconsin reporter asked the governor this week to clarify his stance with regard to setting a base wage, he explained, "I don't think it serves a purpose."

This Is Scott Walker's Idea Of A Living Wage

WASHINGTON -- Linda Branch, a 50-year-old personal care worker in Milwaukee, works 20 hours a week making $11 an hour, or around $400 every two weeks. That's barely enough to make her rent, she told the state's Department of Workforce Development in a recent filing. She added that she recently had to borrow money to keep her electricity running, and that she could not afford to send her grandson, whom she raises, to his recent homecoming dance.

"I was not providing him with a proper childhood because I cannot afford to," Branch said in her statement.

A living wage lifts workers and the economy

As of October 1, minimum-wage earners in Manitoba will earn $10.70 per hour -- just over $20,800 annually. This leaves a family of four, with both parents working, with an income that is more than $1,500 below the poverty line. Single-parent families are worse off with incomes more than $8,000 short. It is widely agreed that a job can be the best pathway out of poverty. But this is only true if wages meet basic needs.

Approximately 38,600 Manitobans work for minimum wage and they are not just teenagers looking to earn extra cash. The majority are over the age of 20 and nearly half work for companies with more than 500 employees. Given that so many minimum-wage earners are adults, we need to ask why our minimum wage does not provide a sufficient income to raise a family.

A living minimum

Ontario managed to raise the minimum wage by 75 cents to $11 per hour, leaving a full-time minimum wage worker not far from 20 per cent below the income poverty level. Is doingalmost nothing now to be considered progress in what used to be one of the wealthiest jurisdictions in the world?

If you are serious about poverty reduction, replacing the minimum wage -- currently set everywhere across Canada at a level below what it needed to make ends meet -- with a living wage -- enough to bring all working Canadians above the poverty line -- makes utmost sense. 

No government is willing to legislate such a measure due to fear of reprisal from business lobbies; so, introducing living wages requires an employer to act. Vancity, the progressive credit union that built itself a comfortable market share competing against the big five chartered banks instituted that policy in 2011. Its example has proven easy for others not to follow.

Largest Civil Disobedience In Walmart History Leads To More Than 50 Arrests

Surrounded by about 100 police officers in riot gear and a helicopter circling above, more than 50 Walmart workers and supporters were arrested in downtown Los Angeles Thursday night as they sat in the street protesting what they called the retailer's "poverty wages."

Organizers said it was the largest single act of civil disobedience in Walmart's 50-year history. The 54 arrestees, with about 500 protesting Walmart workers, clergy and supporters, demonstrated outside LA's Chinatown Walmart. Those who refused police orders to clear the street after their permit expired were arrested without incident. Those who fail to post $5,000 bail would be jailed overnight, Detective Gus Villanueva, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman, told The Huffington Post.

What if the minimum wage was a living wage?

Increasingly, leadership for policy change comes from outside of government, not from within.

It's why many Ontarians who are focused on reducing and eliminating poverty in this province have engaged in a broadening conversation about how to end working poverty through decent jobs, a better minimum wage, and a concept that's gathering force: a living wage.

Living Wage To Be Introduced By Labour Says Ed Miliband As Part Of One Nation Vision

Plans to deliver a "living wage" of at least £7.20 per hour for millions of people in the public and private sector are being put at the centre of Labour's bid to return to power, Ed Miliband has said.

The leader of the opposition said the wage - the minimum hourly rate needed for an acceptable standard of living - was a key plank of his "One Nation" vision to share prosperity.

Miliband has been working closely with his brother, David, at looking at three ways of making the pay terms the new norm, including naming and shaming listed companies who do not pay the wage through corporate governance rules, the Daily Mail reports.