December email to Christy Clark suggested minimum wage tied to inflation would appease "unions and poverty pimps"
Did B.C. Premier Christy Clark peg the province’s minimum wage to inflation in order to “stop the annual carping from unions and poverty pimps”?
Documents posted online in response to a freedom of information request include some (albeit thin) evidence suggesting that was the case.
On December 24, 2014, the premier’s office received an email proposing the province’s minimum wage of $10.25 an hour be pegged to the consumer price index [CPI].
“Why not tie the minimum wage to inflation,” someone suggested in an email to the premier’s office. “A base rate of $10 would increase to about $11 in 5 years if CPI were 2% per year. This approach would stop the annual carping from unions and poverty pimps.”
The email ends on a cheery note. “Merry Christmas,” it concludes.
A few months later, on March 12, Minister of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training Shirley Bond announced the government was increasing the minimum wage to $10.45 and implementing the suggestion described in that email above. (Bond might not have mentioned an email about the "carping” of “unions and poverty pimps” but instead characterized the move as the government’s own idea.)
The package of documents includes a number of other emails about the minimum wage that were received by the Premier’s office in the months preceding the March 12 announcement. But the “poverty pimps” letter was the only one to suggest pegging the minimum wage to inflation.
The email author’s name is redacted in accordance with Section 22 of the B.C. Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, which states that an individual’s personal information should be withheld “if the disclosure would be an unreasonable invasion of a third party's personal privacy”. So we don’t know who to thank for B.C.’s new and adjusted minimum wage.
Until someone comes forward, credit for the increase (which the B.C. Federation of Labour described as a measure to "[keep] workers in poverty") will have to remain with Clark.
Comments
7 Comments
Mr. Shemebleo
Mar 20, 2015 at 1:49pm
Not exactly elegant language but not a real big deal here.
Lupus Travpick
Mar 20, 2015 at 4:19pm
Well as you said, your evidence is 'thin'. Nice try though.
Grant
Mar 20, 2015 at 4:35pm
If you want to give the appearance of doing something but really do nothing to change the situation for people on minimum wage, then you tie increases to inflation. It preserves the status quo but allows you to claim that because you are just "staying afloat", you have nothing to worry about. That annoying cry for an increase in the minimum wage can always be countered with, "Didn't we just give you 1.5%" even though that won't buy you any more food than before. It is brilliant in its dishonesty.
Stanley Q Woodvine
Mar 20, 2015 at 10:51pm
Gee Grant, can you pay a politician a higher compliment than telling them that something they've done is "brilliant in its dishonesty"?
Have to admit that the term "poverty pimp" is freely bandied about by homeless people, including myself.
Blergh
Mar 21, 2015 at 6:36am
"$10.25 an hour be begged to the consumer price index [CPI]."
begged = pegged?
As to the content, pegging to inflation when underpaid is an insult. It means that you will continue to be underpaid. I wonder what sort of moron thinks this would "appease" anyone.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights puts it this way:
"Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control." (Article 23(3))
A great piece of writing---"security" and "standard of living" in this article must in some sense include money. The governments have bound themselves to the UDHR, which means they must provide security, which must be read to mean "sufficient security" to obtain those things, not just "any security" even if insufficient.
We live in a worse time than the french revolution---their aristocracy had the excuse of being (a) educated stupid by the church and (b) landed. On the other hand, maybe Clark, being an Anglican, is this way---perhaps she thinks GOD loves her even if she lets the poor and wage-laboring starve.
G West
Mar 21, 2015 at 10:43am
Why would anyone need anything more than 'thin' evidence to plumb the depths of Miss Clark's thinking? Seems perfectly rational to me that a premier who thinks 'government culture' is sick and who appears to pay more attention to her Twitter feed than what's actually happening around her would be perfectly attuned to find ways to counter 'union thinking and poverty pimps' in the cheapest possible way.
Why would anyone be surprised?
Anonymous
Mar 25, 2015 at 6:55pm
Nothing would appease unions and poverty pimps.
Seriously, $55million per year has been spent by Vancouver Coastal Health in the DTES and all they can say after 10 years is that they need another safe injection site for the junkies who CHOOSE to not give up heroin. That's $550 million from just the health system alone. And anyone who has been around can tell you that things are definitely worse than they were 10 years ago.