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Delivery for Piruzza: Block of ice with $10.25

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Anti-poverty activists plan to deliver a cold message to Teresa Piruzza Friday.

Participants will gather at 11 a.m. at the Windsor West MPP’s office at 2570 Dougall Ave., Unit 2, to drop off $10.25 encased in a block of ice — a symbolic protest calling for the minimum wage to be raised after a three-year freeze.

“A person working full time making minimum wage just to support themselves makes 19 per cent below the poverty line,” Lorena Shepley, an organizer with Voices Against Poverty, said Thursday. “Some people are trying to support a family on minimum wage — and it’s impossible. People are working two and three minimum-wage jobs. And normally, these kinds of jobs have little to no benefits.”

Shepley said the Ontario minimum wage should be boosted from $10.25 to $14 an hour, which would bring a full-time worker to 10 per cent above the poverty line.

She said workers in Windsor have had a particularly hard time, since the local unemployment rate has been among the worst in Canada. She said corporate representatives often say Canada needs to keep wages low or lose jobs to developing countries.

“That’s nonsense,” she said, noting that society benefits when workers have more money to inject back into the economy. “It’s like a race to the bottom. The companies are forcing people to work for less.”

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