You deserve a raise today at��. workers on minimum wage are getting poorer each year - Canadian minimum wage rates lower than other industrialized countries - Ontario Tories did not raise minimum wage in eight years

It's high time low income workers received a raise. For example, the minimum wage in Ontario has been frozen throughout the eight brutal years of Tory rule. To make matters worse, inflation since 1995 has eroded the real value, or spending power, of the minimum wage by 20 percent. This leaves people earning well below poverty wages. In fact, someone earning minimum wage and working 35 hours per week for a full year would be left almost $7000 below the poverty line.

Incredibly, minimum wage rates in Canada are lower than in most industrialized countries and even well below those in the land of the free market, the USA. The Ontario Tories are probably the worst offenders among provincial governments. Ontario is the only province not to have at least some increase since 1998. Despite Tory assertions that people can better themselves by taking on paid work (a big part of their vicious attack on welfare recipients), the government's rotten minimum wage policies mean that many people who go from welfare to paid employment suffer worse financial conditions (even after the lethal cuts to welfare).

This is a situation of gross exploitation of workers by businesses and their political mouthpieces. In a country whose political leaders boast of the best performing economy in the GS, the country club of wealthy nations, it is nothing less than a shameful disgrace.

Politicians and business groups often try to scare people away from calls for a minimum wage increase by claiming it will drive away business and therefore cost jobs. Supposedly labour will be priced out of the market. This is absolutely untrue. Labour, as the primary source of value, is not like other commodities and bosses can't choose to do without it. Research in Canada and the USA shows that increases to the minimum wage actually benefit the economy while increasing the total amount of money going to low-wage workers. There is little evidence from anywhere in Canada or the USA that minimum wage increases lead to increased unemployment. In 1999 Manitoba increased the minimum wage and saw unemployment fall to its lowest level in a generation (below 5 percent). Of course this doesn't even take into account the crucial social benefits that come from reducing inequality.

Conservatives also argue that most minimum wage workers are middle class teenagers doing after-school or summer work while living at home. In fact, most minimum wage workers are adults (61 percent according to Statistics Canada) and almost half are working full time. Many of the part-timers hold more than one job. Most minimum wage earners, around 64 percent, are women. College and university students trying to cover increasingly expensive tuition costs often have to take minimum wage jobs. This burden is especially harsh for students from lower-income backgrounds.

In Ontario this is all part of a broader neoliberal assault on workers. In addition to freezing minimum wage rates the provincial government cut social assistance rates by 21.6 percent in 1995. Thus, after inflation Ontario's poorest residents have suffered an income decline of almost 40 percent over the past eight years.

With a provincial election looming, two complimentary campaigns have begun recently to fight the government, and any possible successor, over this brutal situation. In June the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty sent delegations to the offices of several Members of Provincial Parliament (MPP) of the ruling Tory and opposition Liberal parties to hand-deliver messages serving notice to each party that direct actions will be taken against them over these issues. Additionally, a broad-based campaign under the banner of "Ontario Needs a Raise" has been initiated by a coalition of unionists, low income workers and anti-poverty activists to press during the election campaign for an increase to social assistance and minimum wage rates.

Significantly, these campaigns are working to overcome the false divide between the "working and non-working poor" that the current government has tried so hard to construct. All workers have a right to live in dignity whether they are currently employed or not.

The brutally low social assistance rates and the poverty-assuring minimum wage are linked in the broader attack on workers and must be fought together. Whichever party takes control of government in Ontario after the upcoming elections they must restore the cuts to welfare and increase the rates to account for inflation. They must also raise the minimum wage to at least something above a poverty wage. As well, they should follow the example of Washington state and index the minimum wage to cost of living increases or to a percentage of average wages. No worker should have to settle for anything less.

Of course workers cannot rely on any government that exists to aid and protect capital. This is why the campaigns and coalitions which bring employed and unemployed, unionized and non-unionized workers together against the divide-and-conquer policies of bosses and their governments are so crucial.

Jeff Shantz is a member of CUPE Local 3903 and is active in the Toronto General Defence Committee.

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