The Grey Bruce United Way has updated the living wage for the region to $18.39 an hour.
“If we set the bar on what we can endure, we will never thrive as a community or economy,” said Executive Director Francesca Dobbyn of United Way of Bruce Grey. “A living wage adds to the economy, building capacity and reducing people’s dependency on support programs. It allows one to live, not just exist.”
The United Way began issuing a living wage report in 2014 using a single income family profile.
She added the significant increases to the cost of housing locally, has working people sliding further into poverty.
“A job should lift the employee out of poverty,” Dobbyn explained.” While no one should live below the poverty line, there is an understanding and an expectation that being employed should lift that person, and their family, out of poverty."
The framework was developed by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
The living wage rate is based on a two-income, full time at 35 hours a week, family with a seven-year-old child who requires before- and after-school childcare and a three-year-old child who requires full-time year-round childcare. This family lives in a three-bedroom apartment, paying only for electricity. Due to the lack of rural transportation, this family needs two vehicles to maintain their employment. Neither job provides benefits so they are paying for benefits themselves along with critical illness insurance. One parent is participating in educational upgrading at the local college with a plan to get a better job.
