The problem stems from what is a "just wage." What makes a wage "just"? Is it that they can afford food for their family and a home? OK, then how much food and what types of food (dining out?) and then what type of house or housing? You also have to consider the fact that if you raise wages for a single person, then are you preventing the business from hiring another person at lower wages (one person at a higher wage or two at a lower wage)? Would the person who is without a job consider the lower wage "unjust"? The business must make profits to exist, so you can't pay "just" wages to your employees without considering costs. I would argue that the only just wage is the wage agreed to by both parties, or the market wage. I would love to hear what Jimmy Akin would say about this b/c he is pretty well versed in both moral theology and economics.
But mustn't a just wage also take into account the value of the work (lest you end up having to pay someone more money than their position nets the business)? Also, how can you deal with having to pay different people different wages for the same work (which necessarily follows from making the needs of the employee be the major factor, if not the only factor, in assigning pay; a twenty-year old living at home and working for Playstation money has vastly lower needs than a thirty-five year old father of six working to support his family)?
Anon, you have a good point. If i produce 10 widgets an hour and Joe produces 10 widgets an hour, then we are equal producers for the business. But if Joe has 10 kids and i have none, should Joe get paid more?
This just wage business is perhaps the single thorniest area of Catholic teaching for me. I think I have read almost everything that has been written on it, and, in sum and substance, the teaching is so vague (at least for a linear thinker) that it borders on platitudinous. For Catholics uncomfortable with (and for the most part unknowledgeable about) market economics it seems to inevitably translate into some variant of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Think Marxism with God. For Catholics more comfortable (and usually more knowledgable) with how market economics works it usually translates into confusing gibberish. Hey, what about a just profit? Should/must a skilled laborer who can easily switch employers volunteer to be paid less in order to keep his employer afloat? Since consumers effectively employ the employer, must they buy his product or service if necessary for his family attain whatever contemporary US standard of living a just wage is supposed to permit? The entire just wage line of teaching can quickly get absurd once we get beyond the platitudes. Perhaps that is why the Church has basically just stuck with the platitudes.
Yes, I studied economics (BA 1979). In my experience those Catholic commentators who weigh in most vigorously on just wage issues are not encumbered by much in the way of serious training or study in economics. But that doesn't stop them, Mark, so I think you are just being too felicitous in letting a little thing like AIWAK stop you. 
If you are working for someone else, you are working under their authority. I don't know how often this comes up in the real world. Most companies don't actually cut wages, they just allow them to stagnate. Maybe as a manager one should look for ways to make their employees more productive, thus achieving a wage savings by other means. I certainly trust the man wasn't hired to inform the boss on Catholic Social Teaching.
To answer the question.
* Your first obligation as an employed is to the owner. You act under his authority.
* As a manager, you have an obligation to your employees to improve their welfare. A good manager will be creative in retaining and promoting his workforce. This obligation doesn't supercede the first obligation.
* One would not be required to resign. If turnover is greater than 50% for your employees, you have a pretty decent indicator that you are not working in a just environment.
I don't think the teaching is all that unclear, it's just nuanced. Here's the Catechism (2423), stripped of footnotes, a pretty good summary:
A just wage is the legitimate fruit of work. To withhold it can be a grave injustice. In determining fair pay both the needs and the contributions of each person must be taken into account. "Remuneration for work should guarantee man the opportunity to provide a dignified livelihood for himself and his family on the material, social, cultural, and spiritual level, taking into account the role and the productivity of each, the state of the business, and the common good." Agreement between the parties is not sufficient to justify morally the amount to be received in wages.
So yes, the condition of the business, employee productivity and contributions, and an employee's state in life all have to be taken into account to determine a just wage. So, too, do the dignity of the person and the value of the family have to be taken into account. The Church's teaching also includes the right to economic initiative.
What tweaks some conservatives is that the Church teaches - in clear line with Scripture - that people in an economy, both employers and employees, are true moral actors, responsible for dealing with each other justly, rather than simply automatons involved in a marketplace that by itself is the measure of justice in such matters. The Church explicitly rejects that very popular, quasi-libertarian position.
To take a fairly amateur stab at the actual questions posed:
1) I'm not sure an employee (the manager in this case) has a duty to advise an employer of the possibility of doing something against the moral law which would improve profits. Any positive law that imposed such a duty would seem to violate the natural law, as well, and thus might not be morally binding on the employee, although a court would likely say otherwise.
2) In the case of a manager ordered against his will to violate the natural law right to a just wage, that would be cooperation with evil. It would be material cooperation, rather than formal cooperation, because the manager does not share the desire to do evil. The question to me is whether that cooperation is proximate or remote. If the employee were, say, a secretary who typed the letter to the employees informing them of their new, unjust wage, that's remote cooperation and could possibly be justified by proportionate reasons. In the case of a manager actually implementing the policy, it seems to be more proximate, and potentially unjustifiable to the point it might require quitting. But that would be a question to take up with a good confessor.
Just my $.02. Which is far from a just remuneration for ....
I agree with MZ's post, I think, except for the last sentence. High turnover can have lots of causes, and the lack of a "just environment" (which suggests something larger than "just wage") is only one of them. I doubt that it is even near the top of the list, though admittedly I am unaware of emperical evidence that addresses the question with precision.
* Your first obligation as an employe[e] is to the owner. You act under his authority.
I assume you meant to include an "after God" in there somewhere.
* Your first obligation as an employed is to the owner. You act under his authority.
Your first obligation as a child of God is to God, all authority given to your employer (and to anyone else) comes from God. One can never have a moral duty to act immorally. If, to take a very concrete and obvious example, your employer asks you to materially cooperate in an abortion, your moral duty is to refuse, even if it should cost you your job.
Similarly, if your employer asks you to pay a person unjustly, then your moral duty is to refuse, even if it should cost you your job. Now, as to what is a just wage... I'm still thinking about it. 
I guess one man's platitude is another man's nuance. Let's parse: First, we are told to pay an amount sufficient to "guarantee man the opportunity to provide a dignified livelihood for himself and his family on the material, social, cultural, and spiritual level." Now no one can deny that this is a pretty vague objective, not only due to the heavy lifting assigned to the word "dignified," but also to the rather manifest ambiguities associated with words like "social," "cultural," and even "spiritual." Before we can even swim comfortably in these waters we are hit with the wave of "taking into account the role and the productivity of each, the state of the business, and the common good." It really isn't clear how one exactly takes these things into account, though it would seem to allow for a fair amount of prudential judgment. One does not need to be a logician to ask, well, what if the productivity of the employee is less than an amount that could possibly guarantee the opportunities referenced above? To suggest that an employee's dignified livelihood can be a function of the employer's circumstance does not seem reasonable. Indeed, as a threshold matter it is just not clear whether a "just wage" is determined by reference to the employer's circumstances or whether an employer's obligation to pay such a wage is less than absolute. In the end the Catechism is more than a little vague, and perhaps that is intentional or at least fortunate.
All that said, I very much agree with Kyle that we are always moral actors and that we cannot assume that wages are fair just because they have been freely agreed to. But beyond the factors we have been admonished to consider, I think it pretty much just boils down to each employer's good faith application of the Golden Rule, which, thankfully, is neither nuanced nor platitudinous.
Umm... Your duty to God is a universal duty. It isn't specific to the employee/employer relationship. One is not serving God by being fired from an employer over an issue they are not culpable.
Formal cooperation - You share the intent.
Immediate cooperation - You physically cooperate in the completion of an act that otherwise would not occur. Often this implies formal cooperation.
Mediate cooperation - Your cooperation is such that the act may not have occured with out your assistance.
Remote cooperation - Your action offered benefit to an act but was not a cause.
An analogous situation is a spouse who uses birth control pills. Having stated your objections and seeking a compromise to avoid this behavior, you may licitly engage in relations and not be culpable for the contraceptive effect. Similarly, you can foresee harm to the employees under your direction, but you don't enjoy discretion in making their wages just, having attempted to persuade the employer, you are not culpable in his actions. They are not your employees; they are his.
Literal reading of 2423 seems to obligate the Catholic to hire the high school student (or nobody) at $4/hr rather than the Mexican immigrant with a wife and baby. A critical mass of faithful Catholics like this will lower the marketability of the Mexican's labor and force him to take a job for $3/hr.
Mr. Petrik,
Rather than vague, I would say the social teachings are imprecise. For example, in the U.S. we could agree that $100/hour is a just wage and $2/hour is an injust wage.
You are correct that turnover is not 1:1 factor. I wanted to avoid the situation where we say we can't ever know what a just environment and wage are, and therefore we can't possibly make a judgement on the matter.
Mr. Forrest,
Please call me Mike.
And I agree to stipulate to "imprecise," even if the distinction between vague and imprecise strikes me as either vague or imprecise.
cricket,
Your point is very well-taken, but I do think that the "imprecision" associated with the factors an employer is supposed to take into account serves as a useful -- and I would add necessary -- escape hatch from the disturbing result you suggest.
"and ethics--all of which I lack"
HA! He admits the truth at last!
Heh!
As a Catholic social worker, I would second Kyle's point above. The whole issue of just wage is irrelevant to this discussion because your obligation to your employer does not include presenting amoral options. For instance, you could presumably improve your bottom line by hiring someone to torch the competitor's operation and yet, you have no obligation to share this option as it is immoral. Just because torching an employee's paycheck is a more socially acceptable option in the corporate environment doesn't make it more moral. I don't see why you would be obliged to offer it unless you genuinely believed that the employees were gouging your employer.
I recommend that you avoid the issue altogether by failing to present the option of cutting wages. If the employer brings it up himself, then you'll have to deal with the issue of cooperating with a potentially unjust order, but that's not the situation as you describe it.
Mike, it seems fairly obvious to me that the various nuances that make the teaching seem vague are there because the reality is complicated. (That's your main point, it seems to me, and I agree with it.) As is usually the case, the Golden Rule is a pretty good guide. The social teaching provides guideposts to help form one's conscience on how to apply the Golden Rule here. I don't think it claims any more than that. It certainly doesn't claim to be an economic system in the way Marxism presents an economic system, or libertarianism does.
As to what constitutes a dignified living, some of the encyclicals are more specific, as I recall. Something like this (from memory, so correct me if I'm messing it up): assuming a frugal lifestyle, you can afford food and shelter and other basic necessities for your family on this income, including the ability to buy a home, and enough to set something aside. That, obviously, will vary somewhat from place to place, because a house costs more in San Francisco than it does in Fargo, which in turn may cost more than one in Bangladesh.
This is vague in the sense that someone seeking to rationalize can come up with all sorts of plausible-sounding questions designed to obfuscate. But I think it's clear enough for a person of upright conscience seeking to live it, in consultation with a good confessor.
You further point out:
One does not need to be a logician to ask, well, what if the productivity of the employee is less than an amount that could possibly guarantee the opportunities referenced above?
I think that's what some of those qualifiers about the condition of the business are about. You cannot be morally required to do what is impossible. On the other hand, it is not morally permissible, either, to reduce an employee to merely his productivity. That is a variation on the condemned proposition that "what the market will bear" determines justice. An employer-employee relationship is a personal one as well as an economic one, and the value of full-time work may be greater than the "stuff" created by that worker (the productivity) in that period of time.
It is also possible that a business model or even a whole economic system is inherently unjust, literally predicated on paying an unjust wage. Slavery would be an extreme example of that.
Now, most aspects of our economy I wouldn't compare to slavery (some of the worse abuses of illegal aliens and sweatshop labor might compare). But let's take that example as an illustration.
So you are a faithful Catholic trying to grow cotton in the South in 1830. Yet the entire economy is predicated on the intrinsic evil of slavery. Now, even if you don't own slaves, you're still stuck trying to get your cotton picked in an industry where the productivity of an individual cotton picker is economically determined by the prevalence of slave labor and is clearly unjust. What do you do?
Perhaps a faithful Catholic is obligated not to enter that industry at all. But perhaps it's unavoidable, or perhaps you won't be able to feed your family otherwise, and you have an obligation to feed them. At the very least, it seems obvious to me that one has an obligation to 1) not own slaves; 2) come closer to a just wage and just working conditions than your slave-holding neighbors in whatever way one can given the economic system, and 3) to work at changing that unjust system.
Again, that's an extreme analogy, but I think the take-home lessons remain basically the same for us: 1) respect the dignity of the people you employ, that is, treat them as persons, not as entries on a spreadsheet; 2) do everything you can realistically do to deal justly in economic matters with those you employ and 3) stand up against injustices in an economic system.
Literal reading of 2423 seems to obligate the Catholic to hire the high school student (or nobody) at $4/hr rather than the Mexican immigrant with a wife and baby.
I think there is some (perhaps uncomfortable) truth in this. You choose who to hire. The person you choose to hire is a person in particular circumstances, not a work-widget interchangeable with other identical work-widgets. Some jobs are not suitable for men with families; their objective character is that of the "odd job" that a teenager engages in for spending cash or to save for school. The fact that it is possible to hire a man to enter the country illegally, live away from his family, and send them back money from an objectively inappropriate job that "Americans won't do" (read: adult full-time Americans with families won't do) doesn't make it moral to do so. If you take him on as an employee you take on some responsibility for him beyond the tautological "what the market will bear".
And I think this makes people on both sides of the illegal immigration issue uncomfortable, which to my mind explains why nobody talks about it.
Obviously, presenting the fanciful option of let's cut all their wages would be immoral. But I don't think it is realistic, nor do I think a prudent man would do it. I just don't see a manager going to his boss and saying, "Even though Company B pays the same rate as us, if we cut our wages down since I have no other managerial ideas, we can make more money and you can give me raise." A manager is worthless if that is all he can propose and probably should be fired. Decisions aren't made in a vaccuum, and we don't get these nice dichomtomies in the real world.
Some jobs are not suitable for men with families; their objective character is that of the "odd job" that a teenager engages in for spending cash or to save for school.
Excellent post, Zippy.
The excerpt above seems to me to highlight one of the injustices of our economy: more and more businesses are creating jobs that fall into that "odd job" category and fewer are creating jobs that fit into the "family wage" category. Those priorities are exactly backwards. To the extent our laws and tax structure incentivize this perverse set of priorities, we ought to be working against it.
Zippy,
Do you suggest that it is immoral to hire an illegal immigrant at a low wage? Isn't the employer providing a job for that person that they wouldn't otherwise have? What constitutes an "objectively inappropriate job"? Are they really jobs that Americans with families won't do or (as I believe) are they jobs that Americans with families won't do at the same wage level?
Do you suggest that it is immoral to hire an illegal immigrant at a low wage?
Yes.
Actually I think it is immoral to hire an illegal immigrant at all at present, because doing so is breaking the law and it is also formal cooperation with the lawlessness of others. A change in the law could alter this calculus though, and usually when we talk about immigration we are talking about what the law should be as opposed to what it is.
The point to my above comment is that it can be immoral to hire a family man to do a job that is objectively more appropriate for (e.g.) a teenager. More generally, the persons we hire are persons, not interchangeable work-widgets, and when we hire a person we take on some level of moral responsibility for that person's well-being. If we aren't willing to take on that responsibility we should not hire the person. I don't think you can take the Catechism seriously and think otherwise.
Mr. Forrest,
Umm... Your duty to God is a universal duty. It isn't specific to the employee/employer relationship.
Umm... I agree. But, included in the definition of "universal" is assuredly the employee/employer relationship. If not, it's not universal.
One is not serving God by being fired from an employer over an issue they are not culpable.
I'm not so certain that this is absolutely the case even for an ordinary clerk -- unless you're a slave, you always have the option to leave an immoral situation. Not leaving the situation when you can implies some level of consent. If leaving the job presents high obstacles to you, your culpability may be limited, but it does not seem to me like it is eliminated.
But in any event, the scenario presented in the post was not about an ordinary clerk, but about a manager who appears to be setting the wages for his employees, albeit at the behest of a guy even higher up on the totem pole. Certainly that implies a more proximate form of cooperation.
An analogous situation is a spouse who uses birth control pills. Having stated your objections and seeking a compromise to avoid this behavior, you may licitly engage in relations and not be culpable for the contraceptive effect.
The analogous situation to the post would be suggesting that your spouse would be happier if she used birth control pills and then buying them yourself if she agrees.
Obviously, presenting the fanciful option of let's cut all their wages would be immoral. But I don't think it is realistic, nor do I think a prudent man would do it. I just don't see a manager going to his boss and saying, "Even though Company B pays the same rate as us, if we cut our wages down since I have no other managerial ideas, we can make more money and you can give me raise." A manager is worthless if that is all he can propose and probably should be fired. Decisions aren't made in a vaccuum, and we don't get these nice dichomtomies in the real world.
Using those particular words, it's probably unrealistic. How about the manager says instead, "We can save a lot of money by paying Indonesians a tenth of what our employees make since they can't afford to ask for anything better, and cut costs by phasing out our domestic factory where we pay a living wage with benefits."
Zippy,
So you are saying that if a "family man" comes to me and wants a job that some might consider a "teenager's job" that i have two options: 1) refuse the hire the person or 2) pay more than the job warrants to support the "family man". Clearly a business man would choose option 1 - how is that "just" to the family man if he came seeking the employment?
And, I don't think the Church would agree that providing work to an illegal immigrant is immoral b/c it is breaking the law. Their ability to work and provide for their families would trump a law preventing immigration, would it not?
Bill,
Does God love Americans more than Indonesians?
It is indeed ironic to see the just wage doctrine invoked to prohibit third world nations from using their comparative advantage in labor costs in order to improve on opportunities that are far worse than those of contemporary Americans with regards to opportunities for a dignified livelihood.
One of the reasons I so dislike the lack of precision contained in Catholic just wage teaching is that the teaching is so easily perverted into a protectionist anti-globalization mantra that, at bottom, is just plain old self-interest cloaked in moral indignation.
Campie,
You nailed it. Just tell the family man that he is over-qualified. I'm sure he'll feel swell.
Actually, Mike, the Church has more, again, nuanced things to say about globalization than that. What you describe is a real concern. But to deny that globalization is often abused to exploit people who are desperately poor is to simply deny reality.
Campie, the whole point of determining a just wage is to determine what "the job warrants," and that is, all other things being equal, more for a family man than it is for a teenager who wants gas money. If you are defining what "the job warrants" by "what I can get away with" or "by what I can get him to agree to" or even "by what the market will bear," you have already departed from the Church's teaching.
A just wage doesn't in and of itself doesn't influence the moral calculus of offshoring or immigration. A just wage in Indonesia is different than American, but just because there is a difference doesn't mean that offshoring is immoral due to just wage considerations. If a just wage isn't being paid in Indonesia, it is injust just because it isn't a just wage, not because it is less than an American just wage.
Bill H,
There is no such thing as circumstancial morality, i.e. I'm guilty due to circumstances. For example, if I standby while a woman is raped, I am not guilty of rape for being there. I am guilty of not aiding a person of need. If the man threatens to harm me while raping the woman, I'm certainly not guilty of the rape of the woman, and I'm certainly not morally required to risk my life to save her. Similarly, if the boss says my minions are getting paid less, I'm under no moral obligation to fall on the sword for them.
Kyle,
Good straw man. Of course people are exploited in some cases, but such exploitation was not suggested in Bill's post -- to which I was responding.
And the "what the job warrants" standard is where exactly in Catholic teaching? I parsed the teaching pretty well earlier and didn't see it. Your response, by the way, was appreciated but deficient in a number of key respects -- but I have too much work to do to give it the attention it deserves. Maybe later.
Good straw man. Of course people are exploited in some cases, but such exploitation was not suggested in Bill's post -- to which I was responding.
Well, I didn't intend a straw man, but I may have produced one anyway. I accept your distinction.
And the "what the job warrants" standard is where exactly in Catholic teaching? I parsed the teaching pretty well earlier and didn't see it.
That's the whole point of the teaching on just wage. Maybe you're not seeing the forest for all the well-parsed trees? A just wage is just that - "just": that is, paying it is a matter of justice, not charity. That complicated calculus with all those different factors is how we arrive at "what a job warrants."
Your response, by the way, was appreciated but deficient in a number of key respects -- but I have too much work to do to give it the attention it deserves. Maybe later.
Same here. God's blessings on your work.
I like Kyle's and others' responses.
In the end, the matter requires an informed conscience, good will, prudential judgment, and God's grace.
As a manager, I'm greatly concerned about the wages and welfare of my subordinates. Also, I'm charged with obtaining and maintaining the financial health of the organization. These create a tension, which the manager must balance. If the manager cannot, he ought to resign.
The real problem is to forget about God and his creation by measuring everything by dollars. The labor force is reduced to consumable and replaceable widgets, which are merely costs to be minimized or avoided (e.g., benefits). Instead of seeking the common good, the corporation is able to press its advantages over its employees, which may include unjust wages, unjust policies, or immoral corporate culture (like the promotion of homosexual acceptance).
This raises other topics about the ammorality and immorality of corporations, the true function and resposibility of corporations in society, etc. Unfortunately, avarice and coveting are promoted as positive ambitions and goals; TV ads are very good at this subtle but strong sell.
For a number of years, I've thought the boardroom to be the great frontier of evangelization. Getting there is very difficult in any case, but it seems more so if one tries live as a faithful Catholic. Yet, we are all called to be faithful and holy in whatever state of life we find ourselves in. God help us.
Thanks, Mark.
Clearly a business man would choose option 1 - how is that "just" to the family man if he came seeking the employment?
It is just in the sense that you don't do something unjust to him; that is, you don't hire him and take up all of his efforts while paying him an unjust wage.
...perverted into a protectionist anti-globalization mantra that, at bottom, is just plain old self-interest cloaked in moral indignation.
Interestingly, as a self-made multimillionare whose income comes in significant part from investment returns, globalization is in my own economic self-interest. Nevertheless I don't see it as a plenary good such that criticism of it implies something wrong with the critic's character or something selfish in his motives. But I appreciate the attempt to turn the discussion to personal motives rather than focusing on the objective merits.
"As a manager, I'm greatly concerned about the wages and welfare of my subordinates. Also, I'm charged with obtaining and maintaining the financial health of the organization. These create a tension, which the manager must balance. If the manager cannot, he ought to resign."
The question and challenge with balancing employee needs with the company's financial health is an important point.
As I have moved up the ladder and have had the chance to hob nob with CEO and likes, I know it pains most of them (in my observation) to make decisions about laying off employees and cutting benefits.
I saw a CEO well up in tears discussing a recent lay off decision he had to make. I feel fortunate not to have that burden directly upon my shoulders.
Hmm...so many things to consider, such different suggestions says to me........................SCRUPULOSITY ALERT!
If only Catholic instituations decided to pay their own institutions a just wage. When they do, I'll be more interested in these discussions. Until then, I'll be busy working to supplement my husband's salary.
It is just in the sense that you don't do something unjust to him; that is, you don't hire him and take up all of his efforts while paying him an unjust wage.
So, it's better that he gets squat than not enough? Somehow I think the worker in question would prefer to be at the mercy of capitalist robber barons than the Great and Powerful Zip.
So, it's better that he gets squat than not enough?
Reality doesn't work that way. But even if it did, that would not justify doing him a particular injustice by hiring him - thus precluding whatever else the Lord has in mind for him - for an unjust wage. IF you are going to hire him for a particular job, you MUST hire him for a just wage. Hiring him for an unjust wage is not a morally licit option.
(I mentioned above that nobody who falls into the predictable political camps would like it. But there it is. Read the Catechism.)
Per M.Z. Forrest:
I just don't see a manager going to his boss and saying, "Even though Company B pays the same rate as us, if we cut our wages down since I have no other managerial ideas, we can make more money and you can give me raise." A manager is worthless if that is all he can propose and probably should be fired.
Arguably. But from what I've seen, he'd be much more likely to get promoted.
This is by far the greatest reason I've remained voluntarily in hourly-wage techie ranks: too often, accepting a management position requires that one learn to check one's morals (among other theoretically desirable attributes) at the door.
Either that, or maybe I just work for a lousy company in a morally deficient sector and ought to go do something constructive.
Would not the worker have a moral obligation to not accept a job for a less than just wage? If the employer has a moral obligation not to hire him if he can't or won't give him a just wage (even if his family would go hungry if he were not hired), then wouldn't the potential employee have an obligation not to enter into an unjust agreement* (even if it meant his family were to go hungry if he didn't take the job)? It takes two to tango, after all.
*Which would also be helping the employer to sin, after all.
Anon,
That argument is specifically and unequivocally condemned in Rerum Novarum.
two questions:
What about information asymetry ? The potential employee does know his needs, the potential employer knows far less (partly due to legal restrictions of what he can ask). So is it justified for the potential employer to assume that the worker only applies to jobs which will pay him a just wage satisfying his needs? Can the employers assumption about the workers discernment trump the employers discernment because of the different level of information available for both ?
Second
if an employer rejects an applicant for an "odd job" because he estimates the applicants needs higher than the wage he will/can pay, and those estimated needs are due to a family, why does this not constitute discrimination based on marrital status (and is therefore illegal)?
So where is line between discerning a just wage and discrimination ?
"So where is line between discerning a just wage and discrimination?"
There isn't. Discernment is discrimination.
if an employer rejects an applicant for an "odd job" because he estimates the applicants needs higher than the wage he will/can pay, and those estimated needs are due to a family, why does this not constitute discrimination based on marrital status (and is therefore illegal)?
Maybe so, but doing good will often land you in legal hot water. When the business goes belly-up (because of all the family men the courts forced him to hire and whom he had to pay much-more-than-the-work-was-worth wages out of moral necessity), the hypothetical employer and all his out-of-work employees would be white martyrs.
Flo,
1. There's not a great deal of information the potential employer needs to know. Married? How many kids?
2. It is, unfortunately, possible that some of the factors one must account for to determine a just wage may be illegal to consider under positive law. Not all discrimination is bad - if a bank discriminates against those with felony convictions when hiring a clerk, customers are thankful. If discrimination is practiced to set a wage by experience or education level, we applaud.
But our culture has adopted an extremely reductionist view of the family, treating it as no more valuable than any other living arrangement, and so no doubt there are countless plaintiffs waiting to sue over the fair and just practice of paying a family wage to a family breadwinner and a single-person wage to a single person.
Married? How many kids?
It is illegal, afaik, to discriminate in hiring and compensation based on marital status. So current employment law directly contradicts Catholic social doctrine. (Current employment law, by the way, is, as a general thing, insane).
I think you're also misunderstanding your job as financial advisor: your job is to make the company more profitable BY ANY LICIT MEANS. There are all kinds of kooky ways you could make the business more profitable. You could pay your employees NOTHING. You could steal your raw materials from a factory. You could work your employees at gunpoint. But you don't suggest THOSE options as ways to make the business more profitable. Just think of paying an unjust wage as one of the many illicit means of "Profitability" that you don't suggest. It's really just a paradigm shift.
Zippy,
does Catholic Social doctrine require the employer to verify the actual needs of the potential employee ? (which has to go further than simply marriage status and kids, but then would need to include wealth, medical status, work status of family members, potential inheritance,etc)
Otherwise it comes back to my first question, isn't it sufficient for the employer to trust in the discernment of potential employee, who signals with his application that the job will pay a just wage (with the assumption that the there is reasonable clarity about pay level before the application) ?
"There's not a great deal of information the potential employer needs to know. Married? How many kids?"
During the interview phase our HR department (company is located in California) tells us not to ask questions about family status or even where the candidate lives.
Guess it has the potential to expose the company up to future lawsuit if the candidate is not hired.
...isn't it sufficient for the employer to trust in the discernment of potential employee, ...
As a general thing I would say not. For example, the construction industry hires many indigent illegal aliens at rock-bottom wages. It probably would not function at this point without doing so: that is, the capital structure of the entire industry would have to be reworked at this point if this source of cheap illegal labor was not available. (My source for this assessment is a very wealthy property developer I know.)
Given the structural conditions of that industry, it is not morally sufficient to trust that the consent of the employee constitutes prima facie evidence that the wage is just. The employee's agreement may be morally sufficient in some cases where it is obvious (though that is really just another way of saying that all conditions taken into consideration and the employee's consent do the work of insuring that the wage is just). But in a great many cases it is not, and the Church has condemned the proposition (which makes sense if you think about it) that in general the employee's consent to work is sufficient to establish that the wage is just.
tom, isn't there some sort of Klaxon sound that goes with a scrupulosity alert? Like:
SCRUPULOSITY ALERT! WEEE-WEEE-WEEE-WEEE-...
Here are sample questions I've been told are illegal (in CA only?) to ask during the job interview:
Do not ask the applicant how long s/he has resided at his or her present address.
Do not ask for the applicant’s previous address.
Do not ask the applicant’s marital status, e.g., married, divorced, separated, widowed or single.
Do not ask the applicant how many children s/he has.
Do not ask the ages of the applicant’s children.
I think the question poses a false either/or dilemma. A good office manager should not be limited to a cut-wages-or-else perspective. Ostensibly, he or she should have the wherewithal to conceive of other situations, each with varying advantages and disadvantages, that would address both the employer's and the employees' competing and respective interests.
I think for most of us, Catholic moral teaching applies on the consumer rather than the employer level. If we can, we should buy the more expensive products/commodities that are local and/or fair-trade certified. That solution has the advantage of costing me something beyond armchair indignation at those who are benefiting from capitalism's advantages more than I am.
Ostensibly, he or she should have the wherewithal to conceive of other situations, each with varying advantages and disadvantages, that would address both the employer's and the employees' competing and respective interests.
For instance, can the employees be given the benefit of additional training and/or equipment that would make the productivity of their labor rise to the level of their wages? Are there employees whose circumstances would allow them to benefit from a reduction in hours to part-time status with per capita wages and benefits?
Those are just two possible scenarios. I'm sure more can be drummed up by abler minds.
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