BC Federation of Labour reacts to Fraser Institute’s minimum wage study

VANCOUVER, B.C. — The President of the BC Federation of Labour, which has been out in front of hiking the provincial minimum wage to $15 an hour, didn’t mince any words when reacting to last week’s release of a Fraser Institute study on the issue.

Irene Lanzinger argues the Conservative think tank has worked overtime to try and justify paying working people poverty wages.

As reported earlier, one of the hotly-debated pieces of study data showed that only two per cent of low income workers are single parents with a least one child, which seemed to counter the often-argued perception of a struggling single parent as the typical minimum wage earner.

The Federation’s President also challenged the study finding that minimum wage hikes can do considerable employment harm to low income workers.

She called the core argument of the Institute report, that ‘minimum wage hikes do very little to reduce poverty, nothing more than an excuse for leaving hundreds of thousands in poverty.

Lanzinger added, no matter how you cut the numbers, a person working full time and earning the BC minimum wage is living close to $6,000 a year below the poverty line.