Sure, the free market might allow it, but discrimination is something we don't tolerate here.

This is a hard question to ask because of how touchy this subject is, but I promise this is a question born out of a situation I personally was in.

Does there need to be discrimination for the result to be skewed in this way? The way I read the parent, immigrant employees are willing to do more for less due to a logical judgement about their situation, and from a pool of "Available jobs" may chose to throw a wider net, where someone who has more leeway can be pickier. (In my situation, I was making negligible money and when offered what seemed like a _mind-blowing_ salary of 3x my prior, accepted off the bat, without realizing until much later that I was being paid far below the rate of both my cohort and my experience level for the work being done)

> I was making negligible money and when offered what seemed like a _mind-blowing_ salary of 3x my prior, accepted off the bat, without realizing until much later that I was being paid far below the rate of both my cohort and my experience level for the work being done)

That still sounds like the company that made you the offer was exploiting you; they took advantage of your tough situation to pay you less than they would have if you had more leverage.

That’s called a win-win in negotiations.

Btw, all (well, most profitable) are always exploiting you - paying you less than you produce for the company. You’re also always exploiting the company - you’re making more money collaborating with pther employees than you would by yourself!

I don't think I'd call "getting paid less than my colleagues doing the same work because I'm more desperate" a "win-win"

I think, strictly speaking and without talking about the ethics of the situation, this would be a violation of a free market.

Safe working conditions also took a backseat to sheer survival for children toiling in 19th century mines. That’s no an argument for it being right, but for the need of hash enforcement of labor laws to soften the inevitable edges of a market economy.

Or is it? Look at cases where SEA countries were pushed to stop using child labor in their factories. It was done more by economic pressure than by law, but the end result was that those children ended up much worse off. To the companies that were pushing the economic pressure, is that a result they were okay with?

What happened? I would naively imagine that if factory owners were forced to stop employing children, they would in turn hire more adults, which would drive wages up for the parents? It sounds like something else happened.