I saw an interesting scenario where there was a recruiter of sort announcing that they had a job request from a new client where despite informing them what the market rate was for hiring various people they wanted to pay much less. It’s during a difficult time for some people too so it’s not farfetched that many people would still line up. You could argue that’s simply how capitalism works as an example. But I do wonder if saving some money in these instances would be worst for a company in the long run PR wise.
For example, imagine a restaurant owner saying all workers will not receive any tips from customers while being paid minimum wage as they know people are looking for jobs and there are a lot of candidates as available. I would imagine there a lot of customers who may even try and avoid the business knowing how they treat their employees simply as a number.
There is the debate too where if the business has a strict budget then you can’t really expect them to pay more than they have to if everything is legal. That can be true I suppose where ultimately it’s the market that will decide what businesses to support or not. At the same time, if a business can earn more with the reputation alone of taking care of its workers then whoever is analyzing the numbers may want to think in the bigger picture how that decision may affect profits overall.