GN encourages workers, employers to learn about minimum wage increase
Nunavut’s $19-an-hour minimum wage will be highest in Canada on Jan. 1
Nunavut’s minimum wage is set to increase to $19 per hour in the new year. (File photo by Melanie Ritchot)
Nunavut’s minimum wage is set to become the highest in Canada when it jumps to $19 an hour on Jan. 1.
The Department of Justice issued a reminder Thursday about the minimum wage increase that will take effect in the new year.
A Government of Nunavut public service announcement encouraged employers and employees to contact Nunavut’s Labour Standards Compliance Office for more information about the new, higher minimum wage.
Nunavut’s current minimum wage is $16 an hour, which is similar to most provinces and territories.
But a three-dollar-an-hour increase was announced last month, during the legislative assembly’s fall sitting.
Justice Minister David Akeeagok said then that the increase was a measure to combat inflation and the high cost of living in the territory.
Iqaluit-Sinaa MLA Janet Pitsiulaaq Brewster praised the increase, saying it “will go toward creating healthier homes by allowing families to be better able to afford healthy food.”
The last minimum wage bump in Nunavut was in 2020 when it increased to $16 an hour, from $13.
That right keep increasing unskilled wages but only increase cost of living from other collective agreement to pitiful amounts. The minimum wage increase is a %18.75. Can you imagine if the collective agreements of the GN, Housing, QEC, Municipalities got an 18.75% living wage increase in their collective agreements every 4 years. In 2020 the minimum wage went up %23.07 again it’s time for those with collective agreements to go on strike and demand better living wage adjustments . If the minimum wage increases $3 every 4 years they will surpass senior positions in pay in 12-15 years. (Why would anyone want or need an education?)
STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE!!!!!
Lets make our union actually do something…
Most unionized workers in NU are making double or triple the current minimum wage, and many are not exactly “skilled”. Give everyone who is reliable and hard working a decent living wage, regardless of how “skilled” they are.
Does the one airline of the North pay some positions below the limit and will have to change the pay levels?
What you do not see is the market prices in groceries, increasing labour. Costs ,for house repairs, auto repairs, everything that is labour related, and with this wage increase employers will be laying off students, and other part time workers for full time employees, and it’s even going to mean more southern employees.and higher housing rents .
“Justice Minister David Akeeagok said then that the increase was a measure to combat inflation and the high cost of living in the territory.”
If you don’t change how companies charge for services, the cost of living will still be passed on to the receiver. All services will just go up.
If the GN is so worried about the ability to acquire food then why don’t they work on decreasing food costs and other living expenses for all Nunavummiut? Why increase wages for a select few. This makes no sense, now the stores are just going to raise their prices to offset the increase and then we all suffer? This is sooooo stupid. Good on my 14/yr daughter who works at the till at the coop in the evenings is now getting $19.00 an hour (guess time to charge her rent lol). She can start buying the groceries, maybe if she drops out of school she can work full time and start helping out financially to pay the bills that keep increasing.
So Dumb!!!!
This is always my argument against the minimum wage increase. People argue that the minimum wage should be a living wage, and in some ways I’d like to agree. But I remember when I was a teenager working at a minimum wage job ($6.40/hour just 20 years ago), my paycheques were sufficient enough for me to think I had a lot of money.
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Teenagers that are 14, 15 years old do not have to pay for rent/mortgage, water bills, electricity bills, heat bills, home repair, home/tenant insurance, property tax, car payments, car insurance, gas, groceries, clothes (usually), and all those other things that are living expenses for adults. I think by paying young teenagers a “living wage” while living under their parents roof is really just setting them up for disappointment when they end up moving out on their own and finding out they have less discretionary income at 25 than they did at 15.
If YOU want to help, insist that at 14 your teens get a part-time job (Friday evenings, Saturday and Sunday). Then charge them 25% of their cheque for rent. 25% of their cheque goes to a savings account and they get to blow the remaining 50% as they see fit.
They quickly learn, as they should, that there is a cost responsibility for room and board, a benefit from keeping savings set aside, and how to budget.
Then, as an adult, they have the skills to care for themselves and their family.