Commentary
Vancouver School Board (VSB) trustees plan to correct an error they made back in 2022. Come this summer, the VSB will stop being a “living wage” employer.
This means the VSB will no longer top up the salaries of contract employees such as bus drivers to meet a target set by the activist group Living Wage BC. As a result, bus driver salaries will decrease from approximately $28 per hour to $23.40. Other contract employees such as attendants, cafeteria workers and casual labourers will see a similar decrease in their hourly pay.
At first glance, this move seems heartless. But in this case, VSB trustees did the right thing. The so-called “living wage” is a political gimmick that pressures employers to pay above-market wages.
In fact, the VSB’s “living wage” stipend (or top up) was actually paid to a few contractor agencies who would pass the money along to their employees who were working for the VSB. Thus, you had the bizarre situation where bus drivers employed by the same company would receive significantly different wages depending on where they were assigned. Those assigned to drive school buses for the VSB would receive higher wages than driving other buses. That’s because most private companies cannot afford to pay above-market wages, at least if they want to remain sustainable by charging their customers competitive prices.
When groups such as Living Wage BC pressure government institutions such as the VSB to pay above-market wages to contractors, costs increase. This money must either come from higher taxes on citizens (i.e., taxpayers) or from less money being spent on students in classrooms. Simply put, it’s ultimately students and their parents who’ll pay the price of a “living wage.”
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So what’s the lesson here?
A school board, like any other organization, must set priorities because it can’t do everything. Like everything else in life, there’s an “opportunity cost” to its actions. When school boards focus on political gimmicks and symbolic motions, they spend less time and resources on improving classroom instruction. Given the declining test scores in British Columbia over the last 20 years, there’s a real need to focus on the academic basics.
In addition, without tax hikes, if a school board must pay artificially high costs for basic services (building maintenance, student transportation, cafeteria work, etc.) then it must cut spending elsewhere. This means larger class sizes, fewer textbooks and less ability for school boards to subsidize educational field trips.
No doubt activist groups such as Living Wage BC mean well when they encourage organizations to pay above-market wages. Unfortunately, this often ultimately forces organizations that originally committed to paying a “living wage” rate to back away from that commitment when the financial reality takes hold. That appears to be what happened in the VSB. Faced with higher costs and a growing student population, VSB trustees had little choice but to end their “living wage” commitment.
Obviously, it would have been better if the VSB had never agreed to become a “living wage” employer in the first place. Trustees should have known that paying inflated prices to contractors was a poor decision. Nevertheless, it’s commendable that the trustees now recognize their mistake and are taking steps to rectify it.
Given that school boards have only limited resources, they must focus on their primary mission—providing students with a quality education. Trustees should forget costly political gimmicks and get back to the academic basics.
Michael Zwaagstra is a public high school teacher and a senior fellow with the Fraser Institute.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
