Waterloo Region - I haven’t always considered myself a Living Wage advocate. I “grew up” in private enterprise, and achieved a Masters in Business Administration. I am business-minded by nature and nurture. Any external mandate that limits competitiveness, profitability, or operational approaches tends to get my back up.

So why am I in favour of the Regional Municipality of Waterloo adopting a Living Wage policy for its employees and contractors?

I am in favour for the same reasons I applaud any organization that chooses to employ Human Resources practices that enhance the relationships among employees, the organization, its customers, and the community. But primarily, I support the Living Wage proposal because it supports the Region’s strategic goals.

The Region has a strategic mandate to work for the overall good of the community. To this end, regional government has committed to “manage and shape economic growth to ensure a liveable, healthy, thriving and sustainable Waterloo Region”, while supporting “safe and caring communities that enhance all aspects of health.” Poverty reduction has been a key strategic focus through many regional programs over the past several years.

Just as the Human Resources practices in any organization must support the strategic direction set by that organization’s leadership, so should the Regional Municipality, as an employer and contractor of services, support the Regional Government’s strategic goals.

Currently, the Regional Municipality of Waterloo contracts out approximately six hundred service jobs to private enterprise. This provides business for local and non-local companies while possibly lowering the Region’s overhead.

The Region’s current process permits contractors to achieve competitive advantage and profitability by externalizing the true cost of producing services. The world is waking up to externalization of environmental costs through pollution and resource depletion, and holding organizations accountable. We must realize that paying full time employees less than it costs to live in the region where work is performed is also an externalization. Those costs of living come from somewhere.

Let’s remember what a Living Wage actually is. It is the bare minimum that an individual needs to earn, working full time, to live and work in this region without reliance on social services. Every person in our region who earns less than a Living Wage must draw on our community through social services, dependence on their families or neighbours, or depletion of their own health, life and future, just to get by.

People accept unreasonably low wages because they are desperate and have no choice. They are not entering into an equitable arrangement with their employer; they are doing what they must. The power differential between employers and potential employees, especially in a recession, makes any kind of reasonable and balanced arrangement impossible for those working on the front lines of service.

If businesses cannot provide services in a way that supports the overall goals of the Regional Municipality that pays them, they should not be permitted to provide those services to our region. By law, those businesses are welcome to continue externalizing their costs by paying minimum wage to people who have no choice but to accept it. Our community has no choice but to shore up that externalization through social service agencies, health care costs and a host of other ways that over 40% of our tax money is spent attempting to help those living on low incomes.

But, when the Region contracts out its own services, it must consider the larger implications of its strategy. Contractors are subject to any number of requirements and restrictions on their bids to ensure continuity. Yet, the current tender process for regional contracts puts businesses at a competitive disadvantage when they choose to value their employees’ time and effort at a rate that permits sustainable livelihoods.

Removing the wage variable from bidding processes focuses contractors on other elements of efficiency and effectiveness when providing service bids. It removes the detrimental bias against those businesses that achieve profitability while supporting the community’s overall sustainability.

Employers that value their employees include the costs of fair wages and useful benefits among their strategic challenges, and every day, they overcome them. Certainly, employees are less likely to provide the level of front-line service the Region expects as its face to the community when they are experiencing the fatigue, stress or ill-health that results from multiple jobs and constant worry. How services are delivered, and by whom, requires due consideration in the tender process.

The Region knows this. Already, all Regional Staff earn a Living Wage or better. The Region made a strategic decision to ensure contracted Security Staff earn at least a Living Wage to improve the level of service.

Perhaps a business that cannot be profitable, except on the backs of its employees and the community in which it does business, should not be profitable. Business leaders face challenges to profitability every day. Those leaders work creatively to establish and implement strategic plans that address and overcome multiple challenges, and their success benefits us all. If a business cannot, perhaps its business model is flawed.

A Living Wage requirement stops Regional contracts from contributing to the social cost of low wages. It also reminds our larger Business Community that our Region’s prosperity will not be built through low-wage jobs that restrict individuals from a basic standard of living. Long term, those jobs do not add to our Region’s sustainability, they drain it. Prosperity is created through sustainable growth.

I believe in the Region’s exemplary strategic goals for economic growth within a safe and healthy community. I want to live in a Waterloo Region where every citizen can achieve a sustainable livelihood and full access to participation in the community. The Region’s current Living Wage proposal would not create this dream, but it is one step forward. At the very least, it would end an existing practice that operates in direct opposition to the strategic goals of the government and the community. And that makes it the right thing to do.