Section — Bucceroni, Commentaries (1910)
XI. On Masters and Workers
- The things which have been said of masters and servants must be understood, with due proportion, of patrons and workers, as we have already said, whether these are craftsmen or tenants, who for some definite time, or for some determined work, labor for the utility of others. Moreover, the first duty of all is that they enter a just pact, with due equality preserved between labor and stipend. Then the contract entered must be faithfully observed. Accordingly, the worker ought to furnish the promised work; the patron is bound to pay the promised wage. Patrons and workers can indeed enter a contract of hiring of work or labor for a fitting wage. They can also enter between themselves a contract of partnership, so that the patrons confer capital into the partnership, the workers labor, and then receive proportionate fruit. Each contract is lawful; but neither can patrons compel workers, nor workers patrons, to one rather than to the other; the matter must be determined by free convention of patrons and workers.
- Masters and patrons are bound per se not to burden workers with longer and graver labors, nor to expose them to dangerous labors, unless the reason of the common good requires otherwise and due precautions are employed.
They are bound to treat workers well, with urbanity and Christian charity. Besides, they must leave them liberty of fulfilling the offices of religion, and therefore by no means ought to compel them to work on Sundays and feast days, unless grave necessity urges; and then at least they must grant them time, as far as can be done, for hearing Mass.
They are bound to pay a just wage, according to the pacts entered, and at its time. They are bound not unjustly to impede them from laboring, and from being able suitably to sustain themselves by their labor. Likewise, from charity they ought to succor them when they are placed in necessity, before other outside poor persons, since the workers are more joined to them and are of no small utility; for the profit which they receive is owed in great part to the labor of workers.
Masters and patrons, as superiors, are bound to avert dangers of body and soul from workshops in which many workers labor. Of body, by providing for their health with suitable safeguards; of soul, by prohibiting blasphemies, shameful conversations, perverse journals, obscene images, and that men and women, especially the younger, not be together promiscuously.
- Workers in turn are bound with due skill and diligence to furnish the promised work, with the conditions of the freely entered convention observed. Conditions, that is, lawful and just. Therefore, if they do not labor during the time established by the contract, or if in labor they do not employ at least ordinary and moderate diligence, they are bound to restitution, and must also repair the damage that followed. Nor indeed in any way can they, against the aforesaid just contract, cease from labor, with damage to the master, and much less induce other workers to the same cessation, in order to obtain a diminution of the time of labor and an increase of salary. This is manifest injustice. When the time of the contract has elapsed, and the promised work has been furnished, if they wish to renew the contract under better conditions, lawful and just, and cannot obtain this otherwise by lawful and just means, then they surely can, if they wish, cease from work, yet without impeding by threats and force others willing to labor, and without disturbing public order.
And here it must be noted that the better conditions which workers can demand in entering a new contract can be unjust and just. Patrons are not bound to accept unjust ones; but they are not always bound to accept just ones; for if they also offer just conditions, they are evidently not then bound to accept the just conditions which the workers propose; and those same workers cannot impede other workers willing to labor under those just conditions of the patrons.
- Therefore workers act unjustly if, contrary to the pacts entered, they cease from labor; and much more if by threats and force they compel other workers also to desist from labor; but most of all if they disturb the peace of the city; so that by these means they themselves may furnish the smallest work with the recompense of the greatest wage. - Patrons likewise would act unjustly if, contrary to the pacts entered, they dismissed workers; and much more if they also compelled others by threats and force to dismiss them, so that workers may furnish the greatest work for the recompense of the smallest wage. - To impede this struggle between patrons and workers, it is necessary that patrons embrace workers with Christian charity, and that workers tolerate labor with Christian patience and revere patrons.
- In this matter the civil prince can furnish many things rightly and usefully by his authority: "If it ever should happen that some disturbance threatens because of a withdrawal of craftsmen, or works interrupted by agreement; that the natural bonds of the family are relaxed among proletarians; that religion is violated in the workers, by not sufficiently granting convenience for the offices of piety; if danger threatens integrity of morals in workshops from sex mixed together or other pernicious enticements of sin; or if the masterly order presses the order of workers with unjust burdens, or afflicts them with conditions foreign to the person and to human dignity; if health is harmed by immoderate work, and not accommodated to sex and age: in these causes the force and authority of the laws must plainly be employed within definite limits. These limits are determined by the same cause which demands the help of the laws: namely, no more is to be undertaken by laws, nor is progress to be made farther, than the healing of inconveniences or the repulsion of danger requires." Leo XIII, encyclical letter de Conditione Opificum.
- For determining the just quantity of salary, attention must be paid not only to free convention, but also to the nature of labor. Now indeed "to labor is to exercise oneself for the sake of obtaining things which are for the various uses of life, and especially necessary for the protection of oneself. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread. Therefore labor in man has two notes, as it were, implanted by nature: namely that it be personal, because the active force inheres in the person and is entirely proper to him by whom it is exercised and for whose utility it is born; then that it be necessary for this reason, that the fruit of labors is needed by man for protecting life; but nature itself of things, which must especially be obeyed, commands that life be protected. Now, if it is considered only from that part by which it is personal, there is no doubt that it is free to the craftsman to define more narrowly the measure of the stipulated wage; for as he gives his works by will, so also by will he can be content with a small wage for the works, or plainly with none. But one must judge far otherwise if with the reason of personality there is joined the reason of necessity, separable from it in thought, indeed, but not in reality. In fact, to remain in life is the common duty of individuals, which it is a crime to fail. Hence there necessarily arises the right of finding things by which life is sustained: but the faculty of these things is supplied to every lowest man only by the wage acquired by labor. Therefore let it be that the worker and the master freely consent to the same agreement, and by name to the measure of salary; nevertheless there is always underlying something from natural justice, and this greater and older than the free will of those making the pact, namely, that the wage ought not to be unequal to nourishing the worker, frugal indeed and well behaved. But if the worker, compelled by necessity or moved by fear of a worse evil, accepts a harsher condition, which, even though he does not wish it, must be accepted, because it is imposed by the master or by the contractor of works, that indeed is to undergo force, against which justice cries out."
- But since the price of things which are necessary for life is various, it is clear that the just wage to be paid to the worker is to be attended not only from the labor furnished, according to common estimation, but also from this varying price of things. Therefore the just wage of workers depends on various causes.
The work which is furnished by workers for the convenience and utility of others is the work of a human person, proceeding from human liberty; hence, although it is considered as a certain quasi-thing, it is something nobler than merchandise, and it assumes the nature of merit and of right to reward. Therefore the wage which is rendered to them, and which is usually called salary and stipend, although it is considered as a certain price, exceeds the price of things, and takes to itself the nature of reward and remuneration. But that work, from the provident disposition itself of nature, must be furnished by the worker so that by that work he may procure for himself the things necessary for life. Therefore the salary which is given to the worker for his work furnished is not as it were an exchange of thing with thing, of merchandise with price; nor consequently is it given only for the work itself furnished for the utility of another, but it is also given for the person himself, for the necessity of the person, for the merit of the person.
- Therefore the wage of works ought to suffice for the worker to be nourished, from the intention itself of nature, which supplies industry and labor to man for seeking those things which are necessary to himself for life. Hence primarily the justice of the wage is to be estimated which consequently, since it ought to suffice for daily sustenance, supposes a daily office on the part of the worker. Daily sustenance is certainly not to be taken strictly, as for an animal, but more broadly and suitably, as for a man, so that in it there is comprehended, with due proportion, with the whole time of human life inspected, and the condition of workers in civil society, both food and dwelling and clothing and other things, in the various necessities occurring in human life from sickness, from old age, etc., altogether indispensable for life itself. And these things besides are to be estimated with due moderation; for the worker is supposed not to be vicious and a squanderer, but well behaved and frugal. But the daily office is to be understood only morally, and likewise suitably to the labor itself to be exercised, harder or lighter. Hence, as it certainly does not comprehend the twenty-four hours of the day, so neither is it confined to one or another hour. But since those things which are necessary for life have varying price according to varying time and place, hence also the just salary of workers will be various according to the various circumstances of times and places.
And from this again it is clear that the work of man is not properly merchandise, nor properly is its wage a price. Nevertheless there is no doubt that that work is also as it were merchandise, considered in itself and not in relation to the person whose act it is, and consequently its wage is taken as a quasi-price. Hence the wage of works is estimated variously also under this head, according to the various customs of regions, from the works themselves, that is, from their intrinsic excellence, general necessity, utility, labor, and danger. Hence it is estimated differently in physicians, schoolmasters, painters; differently in architects, masons, diggers. But by no means is it estimated from their peculiar necessity and utility; for this pertains to the hirer, for example, if the boy to be instructed is endowed with great talent.
- Therefore, as prices of things, so again wages of works can be increased and diminished. But they are increased and diminished from those same causes by which prices of things increase and decrease: from the fact that there are many who furnish works, few who hire them; from their daily duration, longer or shorter; from the labor expended in them; from the danger which is incurred in them; from the required skill; from the spontaneous offering of them. Consequently the wage of works will be just if it at least reaches the lowest wage which, in such a place and time, is customarily given to such workers. - And if one furnishing his works furnishes them to another or to others as a quasi-partner, it is equitable that he also receive something from the profits.
But the wage of works can by no means be increased or diminished from the various conditions either of the person to whom they are furnished, or of the person who furnishes them. For justice inspects the equality of thing to thing, not the various circumstances of persons. And thus a greater wage is not to be paid because a less skilled locator furnishes them with greater labor, time, and danger than others; or because he is in want, has a wife, and also has children; whence that absurd family salary is exploded. This is besides exploded also from the very established breadth of the just wage of workers, if these, namely, are well behaved and frugal, and live with due parsimony, which at the beginning is indeed necessary, and then ends in a small patrimony to be acquired.