Halifax living wage $30 an hour: report

Halifax's living wage has hit $30 an hour, according to the latest affordability report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Atlantic. Melissa Marsman is with Nova Scotia's Federation of Labour, of course, always watching the numbers. So, Ms. Marsman, the minimum wage is $17 an hour in this province, so that's not enough to live on, according to this report. What are you hearing about how people are coping? You know, people are living paycheck to paycheck, and they're really struggling to get by with the $17 an hour. Can you give me a sense of, or at least a ballpark, what kind of percentage of Nova Scotians earn minimum wage? I mean, the vast majority of businesses pay more than that, don't they? Yes. So we have about 50% of Nova Scotians that earn less than a living wage. So they're probably earning minimum wage. Any sense of what's been happening to that number over the years? You know, it's just the cost of living. You know, people are not, these, a lot of the people that are getting minimum wage are non-unionized employees. And so this report also points out, I'm speaking of the report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Atlantic. You're saying that the average living wage across the province, when you go outside of Halifax, but including Halifax, sits at about $29 an hour. You might expect this to be more of an acute problem in a bigger city like Halifax, but what are you seeing in rural Nova Scotia? So we're seeing like in the North Lake and Truro that it is increasingly, it's getting difficult for folks to make, you know, make ends meet. It's with the rising cost of fuel, the cost of housing, the cost of groceries, and it's all encompassing throughout the whole province. So it really is not. Just designated to the big city center like Halifax or Cape Breton. We're seeing this in the rural communities in Nova Scotia also. And I suppose that's a shift as well in that it used to be the thinking at least that maybe get outside of the big city like Halifax where it's thought to be expensive to live, get to rural Nova Scotia to find a job and maybe do a little better. Absolutely. I mean, we still have folks that are traveling in from rural areas to the city center to work. But the cost of living, it's no cheaper for them to live there than to really live in the city, especially with the price of gas nowadays if they're traveling back and forth. Okay, so roughly outlined, that is the conundrum. It doesn't seem likely that the minimum wage will increase by, let's say, $13 an hour, if we're talking about Halifax, to get up to that $30 amount anytime soon. So what else should be or could be done? So, you know, and we don't see it, we do not see it raising the $13, but it would be nice for government to bring workers, employers, decision makers, advocates to the table to have that discussion. Let's start that discussion on how we can get folks to a living wage. Through what means? More affordable housing, for example, or taking tax off gasoline? What are you proposing? What would you think might work? Yes. So we need more affordable housing. Absolutely. That is the number one. But it's also the $10 a day child care. We really need the government to start sticking to this. We're hearing from health care workers and we know there's a shortage in health care, but we're hearing from health care workers who are not. going to work or who are leaving their jobs because they can't afford child care, along with just everyday costs, housing, gas, things like that. So we really need the government to step up and get the decision makers together so we can come up with a solution that can help everybody. And so in the meantime, how commonplace do you think it is for people to work multiple jobs, be it lower wage jobs, to try and get at least closer to that sustainability level? We're seeing that all the time. We see it all the time. People are working two and three jobs just to make ends meet. Before I let you go, I know obviously people are still dissecting last week's federal budget. How do you see it impacting labor in Nova Scotia? Well, you know, I'm really looking at that Bill C-39 and hoping, fingers crossed, that it does not pass because I see, I feel like if it passes federally, then it's going to trickle down provincially and it's going to come here to Nova Scotia. Okay, what concerns you about Bill C-39, if you could just remind people about that? Oh yeah, so it's giving the Minister of Labour at that moment the means to go in and end a legal strike. All right, so that's going to. Put a damper on bargaining for all the unionized workers out there. We're out of time. I'll leave it at that, I guess. Anything else you were looking for in the budget, the federal budget? You know, we're just looking for good unionized jobs and for the government not to cut public service. Okay, that's a debate for another day for sure. We'll have to leave it there. Melissa Marsman, thank you so much. Great, thank you.