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by nine_k 3550 days ago
This is $200 a month; unless you work part-time, it's likely illegal.
2 comments

Jurisdictions are quite important when deciding whether something's "illegal".

Seems like that's twice the minimum wage where it happened (just from reading the post/comments), so it's extremely unlikely to be "illegal" where it happened.

(it's a curious question as to whether there's anything illegal, and if so, on who's part, if a Mexican business is paying above-local-minimum wage salaries to people who are not local. If you _accept_ a remote job where the renumeration is disclosed but below your local minimum wage - I wonder if any law has been broken, and if so, by who?)

>>If you _accept_ a remote job where the renumeration is disclosed but below your local minimum wage - I wonder if any law has been broken, and if so, by who?

Yes. That is a crime. The employee has committed a crime by negotiation/accepting the wage. The employer has too. Regardless of where they think they "work" they are employing someone standing in the other jurisdiction. If one allows offshore companies to bypass wage laws then every single local company would be run through an offshore shell, negating the local law. So it is near-universal that offshores must comply with local wage laws.

In practical terms, a flesh-and-blood 'employee' isn't going to be prosecuted. That side of things is reserved for sub-contracting entities that aren't real people. Negotiating a sub-minimum wage contract remains a crime for subcontractors. This is necessary to prevent one-person "companies" negotiating illegal pay for their one employee under the fiction that they are an arms-length subcontractor when everyone knows the person is effectively an employee.

This is only as an employee. You're free to contract your own rate at whatever you'd like (including for free); while "salary" implies a full employment that doesn't look like the case here.

EDIT: none of what I said applies; this was in Mexico.

While I may agree with some criticisms of minimum wages, there are jurisdictions that mandate a minimum hourly rate. Most of the US states are such jurisdictions.