Minimum Wage vs Fraser Institute

A couple of headlines caught my eye this morning but I decided to go directly to the source so I headed over to the Fraser Institute’s website.  Needless to say every article I looked at had a strong conservative bias.  I’ve long known that the Fraser Institute was no friend to labour but some of the research papers were so obviously wrong that I am surprised anyone can take the Fraser Institute seriously.

The institute appears to be adamant that 87.5% of individuals on minimum wage are between 15 and 24 years.  All evidence of my eyes to the contrary and anyone who strolls through Walmart, drives through Tim Horton’s, buys a burger at MacDonald will tell you that the majority of the workers are well over the age of 24.  Then the enlightened ones go on to break down the numbers further by saying that 26% of minimum wage earners had a working spouse as though that justifies a lousy $9.50/hour wage.   A mere 2% of minimum wage earners are single parents, according to Statistics Canada.  The percentages all sound very dubious to me but I won’t belabor my doubts.

Meanwhile the institute goes on at length to say that raising the minimum wage will create job loss rather than raise workers out of poverty.  Naturally, when the labour laws allow employers to cut hours this can happen.  Alongside of any minimum wage increases the provinces should strengthen labour laws.  As I have discussed in the past, operations that can be open 24/7 365 days a year should have a high percentage of their employees working full time (as in a 40 hour week) with full benefits [i.e., at least 50% should be full time and that is just a starting benchmark number – in reality it should probably be more like 80%].

Aside from rental or mortgage payments labour costs is the highest cost that an employer has to make in his business but society has an even bigger obligation to its citizens which is allowing each and every citizen to have a decent standard of living regardless of the type of work they do.  Citizens, not capitalism, should be our sacred cow.