The Newfoundland and Labrador Make Work Pay Coalition is dedicated to improving the living standards of our province's lowest paid and most vulnerable workers and their families by fighting for a just wage, a living wage.
We believe that no person working full-time should be earning below the poverty line.

Our goal is to ensure the minimum wage is a just wage.

The minimum wage in Newfoundland and Labrador went to $8.00 an hour as of April 1, 2008. Our coalition has been successful in bringing attention to the issue of the minimum wage and in its efforts to get the government to legislate substantial increases to the wage floor. Our minimum wage was $6.00 an hour in 2005. But through our efforts, the wage will climb to $10.00 by July 1, 2010 - a 66% increase.

The Newfoundland and Labrador government agreed with our coalition that a schedule of increases to the wage was needed to get it to $10 an hour. The government recently announced a schedule.

January 1, 2009     - $8.50
July 1, 2009           - $9.00
January 1, 2010     - $9.50
July 1, 2010           - $10.00

The Make Work Pay Coalition recommended a schedule that would have seen us getting to $10.00 by October 2009. We will continue to advocate and promote a formula for annual increases to the wage after it reaches $10.00

Future increases: To ensure the minimum wage is not eroded in future, our coalition is recommending that beginning in 2010 annual increases to the minimum wage are tied to the average wage increase in the province or inflation which ever is higher.

The provincial government has committed to reducing poverty - to having the least poverty in the country. One way to do this is to ensure working people are not earning poverty wages, but rather a living wage.

To find out more, please contact the Coalition at info@makeworkpay.ca.