Food prices are the most important reason that we're here today, and I can tell you that Loblaw believes wholeheartedly in fair pay. We offer some of the most competitive wages in the industry.
The fact remains that a large portion of our colleague base is part-time, and the reason it's part-time is that shoppers don't shop all the way throughout the day. They shop in the evening and they shop on the weekends, so we need to have people working in the evenings and working on the weekends. They need to be part-time shifts and part-time jobs.
Part-time jobs tend to have wage rates that are closer to minimum wage. As you know, we have a minimum wage system across the provinces that is now indexed to inflation. Since 2019, the minimum wage has increased over 20%, and our pay in our unionized labour force, which is the substantive portion of our employees, has increased commensurately with that minimum wage increase.
There's always opportunity, but we need to make sure that we're a productive and efficient organization, and we have to do it while making sure that we're paying, absolutely, the right wages for the industry. If you take our average wage as an enterprise, it's over $19 an hour, and that is regarded, as a general statement, in line with a living wage.