[sunshinelackof]

While in my opinion the minimum raise should be raised quite a lot, there are a lot of labor reforms needed. In particular for work that falls outside of the salaried work. Waged, contracted, seasonal, and temp workers do not have a lot of power in the labor market. It's actually a pretty hostile environment for individuals who don't want to collect a salary and sit at a desk.

I view the problem through this lens. That essentially we have a labor surplus because the current regulatory environment is designed around salaried office workers - barring a few holdovers in the form of labor unions. The total size of the labor market is larger than the carrying capacity of office jobs. As the environment has aged firms learned how to play the game and have pushed a lot of small competition out. Meanwhile laborers compete for a smaller pool of office jobs or hope they land on their feet.

This is really the nature of regulation though, it can rarely be meant to last forever and should receive continuous development and audits.

[tetra_proxy]

Salaried work has it's problems as well. I have worked at jobs where you're expected to work 60+ hours every week for no extra pay.