I'm Canadian, and our province's minimum wage has gone up $3 in the last 2 years. It was $11.75 in 2021, went up to $13.75 by October of last year, and went up to $14.75 at the beginning of April this year.
My job was $13/hr in 2021. We were negotiating for a minimum $15.50/hr before the minimum wage raise was announced. The client that we do our services for used the minimum wage raise as their reasoning for giving us $15/hr in April of last year. So, by end of 2022, we were only getting that $15/hr while minimum wage was $13.75.
I was already on the fence about leaving the job site because our expected raise for April of this year was likely going to match the minimum wage's $1 raise again, which would make it $16/hr by that logic. The industry standard for our job is $17-$19/hr, by the way, so we already knew we were being underpaid. But, I just found out an hour ago from my pay stubs that our wages were only raised by
50 CENTS!
Not only are we already below industry standard pay, but we're not even matching rising minimum wage anymore! On top of it all, I thought it was suspicious that we were being given MORE work duties the last couple weeks than ever before. I'm goddamn mortified that people keep rejecting my idea to unionize with all this information slapping them in the face.
Long story-short, I was finding it hard to have a reason to keep working and now I have all the incentive to just quit.