Wage panel doesn't include anyone from agriculture

 

Ontario farm representatives are disappointed there weren’t any agricultural representatives appointed to the recently established Minimum Wage Advisory Panel looking into how the province should set future wage levels.

 

Chaired by Anil Verma, professor of human resource management at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, the six-member panel is made up of business, worker, labour and youth representatives from across Ontario. The panel will report back to the government this winter.

 

Ontario Labour Ministry spokesman William Lin says by email the Ontario government established the panel to provide recommendations on setting the minimum wage “to ensure fairness for workers and predictability for business.” He adds that the “agricultural community is an important voice in this discussion.”

 

Ken Forth, chair of the agricultural industry’s Labour Issues Coordinating Committee, says they’re concerned agricultural representatives aren’t on the panel “because agriculture is the largest employer in Ontario.” The committee is a farmer-driven coalition representing the interests of Ontario agricultural and horticultural employers.

 

The Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association lobbied to have a representative on the panel. Forth says they weren’t told why one wasn’t selected. “We thought it would be important to have an agricultural perspective to it (the panel) too.”

 

In a July 17 press release on its website, the labour ministry says the panel will hold consultations to examine “the province’s current minimum wage policy and give advice on how Ontario should determine the minimum wage in the future.” The ministry notes “ensuring a fair and predictable minimum wage system is part of the Ontario government’s plan to building a more prosperous economy while ensuring a fair society for all.”

 

Ontario’s general minimum wage of $10.25 per hour is one of the highest provincial minimum wages in Canada, the release says. It has risen 50 per cent from its 2003 level of $6.85 per hour. 

Forth says the agricultural industry has a concern about minimum wage increases, particularly since horticultural farmers supplying the fresh market are price takers and not price setters. “We are told what we will receive,” he notes. In some cases, farmers were paid the same rates this year for products that they were paid 15 years ago.

 

In the fresh fruit and vegetable industry, the cost of production has nothing to do with the selling price, he says. Forth, who grows vegetables, says this spring he got $7 a box for a container holding 24 head of leaf lettuce, which is the same price he got 15 years ago. The lettuce was sold in stores for $1.99 per head.

 

If California and New Jersey have a lot a lettuce, then the price is low. “It’s all determined by supply and demand,” Forth notes. “That’s what is perplexing about this business. We have no idea going into the year how much we’re going to get for the product.”

 

Another concern about wage increases is farmers in competing growing areas, such Michigan, Ohio and New York State, have a minimum wage that’s $2 to $3 lower than Ontario’s, while growers in other countries supplying products to the provincial market, such as Peru, Chile, and Ecuador, pay their workers just $1 an hour or even $1 a day. Wales says farmers in the United States hiring workers who aren’t legally allowed to work in that country aren’t following their government’s minimum wage rules.

 

“Our competition probably don’t have a minimum wage,” Wales says. 

 

Forth says they were told a while ago they’d be able to make a face-to-face presentation to the panel but now the consultations are all going to be done by email. “We wanted our word to be heard,” he says.

 

Ontario Federation of Agriculture president Wales says he found out Wednesday  (Aug. 7)  “the panel isn’t going to receive any face-to-face presentations.” But the Labour Issues Coordinating Committee will be lobbying to ensure agriculture can do a face-to-face presentation.

What Forth and Wales were told conflicts with what the ministry says. Lin says in his email the panel “will hold face to face meetings across different regions of Ontario this fall to solicit input from all interested parties.”

 

Lin says during a telephone interview there will definitely be in person consultations this fall across Ontario. No dates or locations have been set yet.  “The plan has always been to solicit feedback from a whole host of stakeholders, though email, fax and mail and also face-to-face consultations.” BF