Teacher Ryan Kelly belongs to a union where every member earns a living wage.But the women who run the cafeteria at the Whitby high school where Kelly taught math and computer science last year make just $11.50 an hour, nowhere near enough to have a decent quality of life, he says.Kelly wants that to change.He wants the Durham District School Board to become a living wage employer and ensure everyone working in area schools — including contract employees like cafeteria staff — earns a living wage.“Unions are at the forefront of the battle for equity in society and so it is reasonable for us to make this an issue,” said Kelly, who works with the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation in Durham. “We don’t want students to see poverty in our own (school) structures.” Kelly’s quest is getting a boost Thursday when Durham’s social planning council releases a research report that for the first time puts a dollar figure on a living wage in the region.According to the report by Community Development Council Durham, workers need to earn $17 an hour to have a “reasonable” quality of life.Durham is the third community in the GTA after Toronto and Halton to make the calculation. Peel is expected to release its living wage later this year. Toronto’s living wage in 2015 was calculated at $18.52 an hour. The living wage in Halton was $17.03 in 2013.As the Durham report notes, the provincially set minimum wage of $11.40 an hour fails to account for the wide variation in cost of living, such as utilities, rent and food, across communities.“The living wage project aims to close this gap by adjusting for regional differences in critical quality of life measures,” the report says.Unlike the minimum wage, which barely covers the cost of food, clothing and shelter in many Ontario communities, the living wage also includes the cost of child care, transit, cell phones, recrea ...
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