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Two examples: In a criminal trial, you have a right to a defense attorney, but you can waive this right.

In labor law, you have a number of labor related rights that, if you could voluntarily waive them, would effectively render the law void. If you could waive your right to a minimum wage, companies could simply offer a wage waiver with every employment application. I strongly suspect this would be illegal.

Yet, it seems like your right to an attorney is more fundamental and important than your right to agree to be paid a certain amount for certain work.

Is there any reason why some rights could or could not be waived?

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One doesn't normally speak of "rights" in discussions of minimum wage. Instead it is an obligation on the company to pay, not a right of the worker. The worker cannot waive the right, since that would mean breaking the law.

If there is an obligation created by law then an individual may be unable to release someone from that obligation.

Other rights and obligations are written in such a way that they may be waived. For example "No soldier...shall be quartered...without the consent of the owner..." The ability of a person to waive their right not to quarter soldiers is explict.

So certain rights can be waived because of the precise wording of the laws that create those right. The question of whether a rational person could ever want to waive a right is central to whether a right can be waived.

A person may rationally choose to represent themselves. A person may rationally choose to quarter a soldier in their house. A person may rationally choose not to own a gun. Thus the rights to a lawyer, fifth amendment rights and the second amendment rights can rationally be waived.

On the other hand a person would not rationally accept less money for work than is offered. No rational person would submit to cruel or unusual punishment, thus one cannot choose to waive these rights

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  • This has more to do with the precise wording of the law and the politics in place when the legislation was enacted, and less to do with logic than the answer suggests. There are non-waivable rights that many people might rationally waive but don't because the law says that they can't, and other rights that are waived "irrationally" because people have no other practical choice.
    – ohwilleke ♦
    Commented Mar 13, 2018 at 0:17
  • "On the other hand a person would not rationally accept less money for work than is offered" -- strongly disagree. Note that the point of my waiving would not be to lower the pay that has already been offered to me, but to get an offer at all. Someone sufficiently desperate for income (in a recession, say, or with some personal disqualification making it difficult to get a job) might gladly accept employment for slightly less than minimum wage, if the alternative is no income. Employers have no obligation to give a job to anyone with a pulse.
    – nanoman
    Commented Mar 15 at 5:30
  • "No rational person would submit to cruel or unusual punishment" -- strongly disagree. For example, given that the death penalty exists (and is not yet considered cruel and unusual), it is very plausible that someone might personally prefer a sentence of a few minutes of torture if that were an allowed alternative to death (or even to a long imprisonment).
    – nanoman
    Commented Mar 15 at 5:31
  • Yes but that's not the point. If you are threatened with death, then you are choosing anything. So irrelevant. Also, if employers are allowed to pay less, then it isn't a minimum wage, by definition. So as I say this isn't a "right which you can waive" but an obligation on employers.
    – James K
    Commented Mar 15 at 7:34

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