Sometimes it's not about what the law says, but about what society does. In practice, these are the minimum wages. Perhaps you can diverge from them for a while

Sometimes it's not about what the law says, but about what society does. In practice, these are the minimum wages. Perhaps you can diverge from them for a while without punishment, but that doesn't make them not the minimum wages. It just means that the enforcement is different. Arguing about the legality is a harmful modern fetish that especially in contexts such as these does not help us move along.