Not easy if you live paycheck-to-paycheck, which most such people do. Can't afford the time it takes to find a better-paying job, or more likely, retrain before searching for such a job.
Just because a vulnerable person allows you to take advantage of them, doesn't make it ok.
If you can see that your employees are struggling to survive (and on $15/hr in Silicon Valley, you can about guarantee that they are) it would be in your best interest to give them a raise. But most of all, it's the human thing to do.
We don't have to live in a world where everyone is angling to squeeze every last drop from everyone else.
Why work at large Bay Area tech: - Free catered breakfast, lunch and dinner - Free gourmet coffee - Free snacks - Free drinks - Free company merch: t-shirts, backpacks, jackets, tickets to events, etc. - Nice offices - Nice bathrooms
Added value per day = $75+
Why work at Target: - $3 more per hour
Added value per day = $24 (assuming 8 hour shift)
By your argument, it doesn't; a single well-placed argument from you can have all the security guards from Google tomorrow and someone helpful in every aisle at Target.
And I can't tell you much about bananas but in my first tech job out of college my management sat me in a room one day and said, "We think you're doing a good job so we're going to pay you more." Apparently this is called a "raise" and is not uncommon? There must be some rationality behind it, even though I've never give a so-called "raise" to a banana.
... and this conveys the fact that the work to be done, isn't considered valuable enough to support a human life.
Making these kinds of jobs illegal just puts them out-of-reach of youths and speeds up the perennially-villified yet inevitable process of automation.
Why should the company be blamed when people keep lining up to work for the wages on offer?
Does anyone buying bananas at Safeway just randomly decide to pay more than the asking price? Of course not. It’s the same with companies.