John Mathenke, a Nairobi sex worker, was diagnosed with HIV in early July. He is working with the Sex Workers' Outreach Program to educate other sex workers about HIV prevention. Photo by Siena Anstis.

Blended into the colourful storefronts of Nairobi’s River Road area is the Sex Workers Outreach Program (SWOP), a discreet but accessible clinic offering HIV and STD testing and treatment to the estimated 7,000 prostitutes who work in the central business sector of Kenya’s capital city.

While the clinic was created in close consultation with Nairobi’s sex workers, its origins are the result of a partnership between the University of Nairobi and the University of Manitoba that dates back to 1980.

Shortly after the two schools first collaborated to start exploring the murky world of HIV-AIDS transmission through prostitution. Despite being a whole continent away and exploring a disease that was not yet a “hot topic,” the University of Manitoba was determined to continue the research it had started in Canada in the 1970s on STDs, and later HIV. The school’s initial findings attracted the attention of Herbert Nsanze, the then-new chair of medical microbiology at the University of Nairobi, who invited the U of M to work from Nairobi’s streets.

This partnership has resulted in some groundbreaking research, most notably, the discovery that some prostitutes are immune to HIV despite having more than 500 partners a year. The two universities have also launched two research and treatment clinics, including SWOP, which recently celebrated its fi rst anniversary.

Over the past year, SWOP has grown from a quiet start-up to a busy clinic that regularly treats 2,600 female and 65 male clients. To Joshua Kimani, the Kenyan-born, U of N-educated doctor who now oversees the clinics run by the two schools, these numbers are a sign of success.

Kimani is particularly excited to see the growing presence of male sex workers. “It takes a long time to win the confidence of men,” explains Kimani. “There is a double stigma, adding insult to injury, of men who have sex with men and who are also sex workers.” In Kenya, both homosexuality and prostitution are illegal.

Together, the University of Manitoba and the University of Nairobi have made a significant dent in the HIV rate among Nairobi’s sex workers. Majengo, one of their other clinics, saw the HIV rate drop from 10 percent to 1.5 percent over the past two decades. With research and technical support from the University of Manitoba, SWOP expects similar results in the coming years.

The simple answer is yes, if only because no government is likely to hike the minimum wage by $2 or $3 for fear of raising the cost of doing business too quickly and sending jobs to cheaper regions. So, if it weren’t for 20-cent or 30-cent increases, there would be no increases whatsoever.

But you raise an interesting point about whether those small increases get eaten up by higher-priced goods and an increased cost of living. It is clear that the price of some goods do rise after the minimum wage is increased. When Ontario’s rate was raised in February—to $7.15 from $6.85, the first hike in almost nine years—it was hard not to notice the price of a cup of coffee breaking the $1 mark and fast-food combos ringing in at about $7.

But Norman Cameron, an economics professor at the University of Manitoba, cautions against assuming those increases are across the board. “This only affects parts of the economy that employ minimum-wage workers, who are 10 percent of the labour force at most,” he says. “It’s not going to affect the health, education, manufacturing, transport or wholesale sectors.”

So, while the canny consumer will notice price jumps at service sector businesses—such as coffee shops, department stores and fast-food restaurants—those increases won’t have a dramatic effect on the cost of living as a whole. At most, it might translate into an increase of one-half of one per cent, Cameron says. And because increases to the minimum wage usually “trickle up” as employers try to keep their pay rates proportional, other low-income workers often aren’t burdened by an increased cost of living.

It also isn’t a given that businesses will automatically push their higher labour costs on to consumers, especially in the highly competitive service sector, says Charles Beach, an economics professor at Queen’s University and editor of Canadian Public Policy. “It depends partly on the degree of competition,” he says. “If you’re close to going out of business, then you really can’t push your prices much higher.” As well, he says most businesses only pass on about two-thirds of their labour costs to consumers.

So, small increases in the minimum wage are not entirely eaten up by an increased cost of living, giving low-wage earners more spending power. But not much more, says Todd Scarth, director of the Manitoba office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. “The big problem is that [most] provinces have allowed the purchasing power of the minimum wage to be eroded significantly by inflation,” he says.

Given that the cost of living increases about two percent a year, in the case of Ontario, the recent minimum wage increase of 30 cents an hour is barely a four-percent hike and doesn’t even come close to the 18-percent increase required just to keep pace with inflation. “The answer is continued, sustained and, for the benefit of both workers and [businesses], predictable increases that ultimately add up to enough to make a difference,” says Scarth.

But that’s a hard sell to provincial governments. While Ontario, for example, has trumpeted its new plan to aid the working poor by making annual increases to the minimum wage until it reaches $8 an hour in 2007, that will still fall about 22 cents short of what’s required just to keep pace with inflation.

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This Magazine welcomes Bruce Gillespie, who takes over our This & That section with this issue. He is a freelance writer and editor whose work has appeared in Saturday Night, Quill & Quire, the National Post and Bankrate Canada. He lives in Simcoe, Ontario.