Speech at Council in favour of being a Living Wage City
(Check against delivery)
January 2020 the Prime Minister walked into the Oh Donuts shop on Broadway and Winnipeg’s Donutgate began carrying with it the force of the living wage debate.
Amanda Kinden the owner of Oh Donuts was unapologetic as she took to her social media – and to national media to defend her locally owned, locally sourced donut shop. Her 30 employees bake locally owned and produced food; they get breaks; and they are payed a living wage.
Down the street? Another business looked on – Fools & Horses coffee – they pay all trained staff a living wage – so their coffee is good from the ground up! They use a triple bottom line model and Fools and Horses is using Benefit Corporation, or B Corp, guidelines to help structure how it manages its environmental and social impacts. Including using the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose. This is their expectations of themselves.
This is why I think it should be our expectation of the city.
In the words of Fools and Horses:
“It’s the difference between valuing the staff you hire, training them really well and having higher expectations, versus having higher turnover and the higher costs associated with regularly replacing staff.”
The City of Winnipeg has done meaningful work towards supporting the vision that many corporations that support a living wage. My colleague, Councillor Mayes, reminded us of a few of these reports that serve as a roadmap – serves as our roadmap. I’d like to consider the Winnipeg without Poverty Report made to the city back in 2018 where a living wage was a significant part of the strategy.
Employment Equity was also part of the strategy within all levels of the civil service; adopting a living wage policy paying direct employees a living wage – was as well.
I will note that as Chair of Protection, Community Services, and Parks that rec techs, library shelvers staff - maintaining them in our facilities is indeed part of my interest in this vote today. Understanding that workers at the City of Winnipeg including some of our contractors are making less than $15.00 per hour currently and many of whom are women, younger workers, Indigenous, and racialized workers is problematic.
Working with local living wage advocates across the country is also of interest – as both presenters in delegation mentioned. My own comments at EPC reflected the need to consider indexing, consider the work required to be a certified living wage employer.
A consistent definition is needed; a calculation of actual costs (indexed) and recognition for those like Oh Donuts; and Fools and Horses are three key ingredients to be a living wage city. It would be helpful to have a report on all of this.
It would be very meaningful to carve out the budget & stand shoulder to shoulder with employers as city’s like Hamilton, Kingston, and Huron County do when they celebrate and recognize their employers.
There are so many reasons to support a living wage motion that Councillor Mayes has put forward and the amendment that dives deeper that Councillor Santos has moved forward. I support both these motions.