Minimum wage increase in NL

Today at CBC they're running this story in NL, which opens:

"Newfoundland and Labrador's minimum wage rose Tuesday, although it's expected to have little effect on employers who are already desperate to find workers."

Ok. First of all, I know the CBC has faced some pretty severe cuts in NL but this is a little absurd. The goal of a minimum wage is to keep people from starving too quickly, not, as the title suggests, to help employers. They can increase their wages to a point where employees can even survive reasonably well if they decide to do so. That this Timmy Hoes owner needs a gun put to his head to start paying his employees? He can give them the whole store if he wants to and they can run it. There, problem solved.

Secondly, that the wage's floor is so low in NL (and throughout Canada and the US generally) is appalling. In the service sector especially and McJobs especially -- where capital flight cannot be as great a problem (they can't mail you your double-double from India or Mexico (for everything else thanks NAFTA), the minimum wage can help keep money in the province (cash to employees and not to the profit margin), redistribute wealth and create more economic activity as these lower income persons by some of the things they desperately need. Even in non-service sectors the minimum wage has a negligible impact on the economy at worst (even using neoclassical methods of classifying the economy) while benefiting those who need it most. I spent half a year researching minimum wage policy, and unless you work with a (group)think-tank like the Fraser Institute the results are pretty clear.

Personally these people need to unionize to make their working conditions worthwhile (Newfoundland and Labrador's labour laws are not the friendliest), but until then surely the government can index the minimum wage and increase it to a livable level. They owe it to the people they represent.