Working Poor or Making a Living?
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Low wages affect the amount of resources available to governments at all levels through taxes, including income, property and sales taxes. This in turn has a negative impact on our ability as citizens to collectively fund public goods and services such as schools, health care, public transit and infrastructure. At the same time, low wages often force families to seek forms of public assistance simply to get by, putting further strain on public resources. Low wages have impacts on businesses in our communities because they reduce the amount of money available to families for purchases of goods and services.
What do we hope to achieve?
The goals of Public Interest Alberta’s Living Wage Task Force are to:
- Initiate a discussion in communities across Alberta about how low wages affect our communities, our economy and the well-being of our society.
- Provide some background on the concept of a Living Wage, and why we believe we need to have a wage policy that reflects today’s realities.
- Foster an understanding of the importance and cost-effectiveness of public services, institutions and spaces in Albertans’ lives, and how these public goods make possible a higher standard of living for all Albertans.
- Consult with Albertans and interested organizations to develop a measure of what constitutes a Living Wage in communities across Alberta. We have developed an online survey that we hope you will take the time to fill out, to enable us to calculate how much you think an individual and a family needs to earn to live a safe and healthy life. A print version of the survery is also available in our booklet, Making a Living: Defining a Living Wage for Alberta.
- Build a network of community groups and concerned individuals in communities across Alberta to develop a strategy aimed at implementing Living Wage policies for municipalities, public institutions and ultimately for the province.
Click here if you would like to join our efforts or contact us if you have questions about how your organization can participate in our campaign.
A word of caution
Issues of poverty are complex, and we cannot possibly hope to capture the diversity of conditions or experience of people living in poverty. With this information, we hope instead to highlight some of the many issues involved, start people thinking and talking about how low wages impact individuals and our communities and focus on the problem of poverty in what is a very wealthy province. It is intended to be a starting point for a long-term process of consultation and advocacy, rather than a final and definitive account of the situation.
It should also be noted that, since we are discussing the issue of a living wage, we are not directly addressing the deep and persistent poverty faced by those who are unable, for whatever reason, to enter or remain in the workforce, and are thereby forced to live on increasingly limited forms of social assistance.
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