New Brunswick’s second minimum wage hike of 2022 puts us on par with the Maritime provinces, for now
New Brunswick’s minimum wage went up by one dollar on Saturday, to $13.75 per hour. It’s the second increase this year, after another one dollar hike in April. The raise is a departure from the year before, in April 2021, when New Brunswick’s minimum wage went up by just 5 cents.
Janelle LeBlanc is provincial coordinator for the Common Front for Social Justice which runs campaigns around public services, pay equity, employment standards and social assistance. LeBlanc says that increase won’t seem like much for workers, relative to increases in cost of living.
“The government of New Brunswick has been saying this is a big increase, but if you consider inflation rates and the cost of living that skyrocketed this year, people are really, really struggling to make ends meet,” says LeBlanc. “There’s more people in debt this year, more people using their credit cards to buy essential items. And according to the government’s stat, there are more people working minimum wage jobs. So that means there’s more people who are low income and having trouble making ends meet.”
In a press release at the end of 2021, the province said there were 15,500 people earning less than the then-minimum wage of $11.75, and another 30,000 people earning less than $13.75 per hour. The release also stated the $2 raise in 2022 represented a 17% hike, the largest increase to New Brunswick’s minimum wage since 1980.… Continue
Min wage to get bumped twice in 2022
On Thursday, the New Brunswick government announced a plan to increase New Brunswick’s minimum wage by $2 over the course of 2022. The first raise of one dollar, from $11.75 to $12.75, will happen in April, about four months from now. Then six months after that, in October 2022, the minimum wage will go up by another dollar, to $13.75.
The move should knock New Brunswick out of its uncomfortable spot as the province with the lowest minimum wage in Canada, which labour minister Trevor Holder cited as a motivation for the move at the announcement Thursday. “We cannot be last in Atlantic Canada,” said Holder, citing the example of wage discrepancies between border towns like Amherst and Sackville.
“I’ll put it to you this way,” said Holder. “A hamburger costs pretty much the same in Sackville as it does in Amherst. And it costs about the same to produce it. My question is, why would anybody think that it’s appropriate that the person serving that hamburger in Sackville is compensated $2 less than the person over in Amherst? It’s just unacceptable. It’s time that we moved on and made sure that we weren’t leaving New Brunswickers behind.”
Currently, PEI plans to raise its minimum wage to $13.70 in April, when most provinces make their annual adjustments. That will leave PEI in the top position in the Maritimes until October, when the second raise in New Brunswick will put this province 5 cents higher, at $13.75.… Continue