Inaction Threatens to Stagnate Manitoba Minimum Wage

First published as an editorial in the Winnipeg Free Press July 18, 2016 By Molly McCracken Unless immediate action is taken, 2016 will be the first time in a generation that minimum wage workers will see their wages …

When does Temporary become Permanent?

By Lynne Fernandez and Nicole Smith Each year up to 400 mostly Mexican workers come to Manitoba under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) to work on local farms. They perform physically strenuous work on vegetable farms and …

Fight food insecurity with income

By Molly McCracken The rise in food costs disproportionately affects the poor as food makes up a larger portion of their spending. Increased income, educational programs and northern food subsidies need to work hand in hand if the …

Investing in Social Enterprise to reduce poverty and green house gases

By Lynne Fernandez A new Errol Black Chair paper explains how a combination of governmental policies and initiatives in Manitoba allows social enterprises to reduce Manitoba’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while training and employing Inner City workers. The …

Stagnant wages for over 80 percent of Canadian workers

Are wages in Canada stagnant or growing? The short answer is another question: do you live in an oil boom province? There’s a fairly common meme that Canadian wages are no longer stagnating, as opposed to US wages. …

WorkLife: There’s Power in Youth and Unions Working Together

By Gabriel Bako While the labour landscape has changed dramatically in Canada in the last 58 years, the legal framework has not. The labour relations framework that we use today in Canada was implemented in 1944 with PC-1003, …

The Living Wage: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

By Lynne Fernandez Minimum-wage workers are not just teenagers working at fast-food restaurants after school. According to the Manitoba Federation of Labour, 55 per cent of minimum wage earners in Manitoba are adults twenty years and older; 51 …

End of Immigration?

Manitoba Preview of  The End of Immigration Monday, October 29 at 7:00 p.m. Ellice Theatre at Ellice and Sherbrook By Lynne Fernandez Every year thousands of migrant workers come to Canada to do the work Canadians don’t want …

Looming increases to food prices will create more challenges to reducing poverty in Manitoba

PDF version by Brendan Mierau Early last year stories hit the news about the potential for food prices to rise throughout 2011. Commodities prices for wheat, corn, sugar, and others were all on the rise which ultimately resulted …

Anti-unionism at Heart of Free Press Argument

By Lynne Fernandez For such a short article, the June 29th editorial: Do not further inflate Bipole III raises an impressive array of questions and concerns. First of all, according to reports from the Floodway Authority (and as …