My Slim Pickin’s

By Jim Hagarty
2017

I don’t know enough about the issue of raising the minimum wage to have an educated opinion and need to do some research but I remember when the minimum wage was $1 an hour in the sixties. Then by the mid seventies it was $4.20, I believe. I was at a job that paid $4.20 an hour, so that was probably minimum wage. I know it’s complicated because I believe there were different minimum wages for different sectors. In any case, I find it interesting that if the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation, it should have been $20 an hour or more by now. I remember the $1 minimum because I had friends who were working as chicken catchers for that wage while I was exalted, working on bridge construction for $1.65 an hour. I worked 50 hours a week for $82.50. We were paid normal rate for overtime hours, no extra pay. In spite of the $4.20 an hour days, later on, I did manage to buy my first brand new car for $4,000.

(The Canadian province of Ontario, where I live, is raising the minimum wage in stages, starting at $14 an hour and increasing eventually to $15 an hour. In my bridge construction days, when I was 16, I earned $16.50 for a 10-hour day.)

Author: Jim Hagarty

I am a 72-year-old retired journalist, busy recovering from a lifelong career as an unretired journalist. This year marks a half century of my scratching out little fables about life. My interests include genealogy, humour and music. I live in a little blue shack in Canada and spend most of my time trying to stay out of trouble. I am not that good at it. I also spent years teaching journalism. Poor state of journalism today: My fault. I have a family I don't deserve, a dog that adores me, and two cars the junk yard refuses to accept. My prized possessions include my old guitar and a razor my Dad gave me when I was 14 and which I still use when I bother to shave. Oh, and my great-great-grandfather's blackthorn stick he brought from Ireland in the 1850s. I have only one opinion but it is a good one: People take too many showers.