With our biennial provincial minimum wage review underway, we offer a submission to the Minimum Wage Review Committee.
The minimum wage review requires a gender-based analysis because women are the majority of minimum wage earners in Newfoundland and Labrador. In 2020, the province’s minimum wage review committee noted that women and non-binary people, Indigenous people, folks who are 2SLGBTQIA+ and people living with disabilities will be most impacted by an increased minimum wage.
At the St. John’s Status of Women Council we see the consequences of our minimum wage and its disproportionately gendered impacts everyday. The reality for minimum wage earners in Newfoundland and Labrador is that workers and their families are living in poverty. What living on minimum wage looks like for women and non-binary people is housing instability, food insecurity, criminalization, and survivors of violence being trapped with fewer options to
access safety.
The St. John’s Status of Women Council recommends that Newfoundland and Labrador:
1)Adopt a minimum wage of $15 per hour, at an absolute minimum, in 2022.
2) Proceed towards establishing a living wage as our provincial minimum wage.
3) Ensure that all economic policies and legislative decisions include a transparent gender based analysis, that also looks at the situation of other marginalized groups in our province, to address disproportionate impacts experienced by women and people of marginalized genders.
Read our submission in full:
Learn more about how to share your own submission: https://www.engagenl.ca/engagement-initiatives/minimum-wage-review-0