Section — Noldin, Summa of Moral Theology
Section 3. On Hiring of a Work
613. Notions and principles. a. Here work is called whatever someone undertakes to complete, as to build a house, construct a road, make a garment. The making of the work for a determined price is the object of this contract.
b. He who undertakes to complete a determined work for a certain price, whether by private agreement or by public competition, is called the redeemer or undertaker of the work (Unternehmer).
Principles. 1. The undertaker acts against justice if he does not pay a just wage to hired workers, so that he himself may receive greater gain from completing the work.
- He acts against justice if he does not observe the conditions of the contract and therefore the locator suffers damage, because he uses cheaper matter or works with less diligence.
It is not permitted to press the wage of workers below the family wage, not even when the undertaker of the work adverts that he cannot complete the work for the agreed price without his own damage.
He must make the entire work within the constituted time for the determined price, and he cannot increase the price, even if afterward the prices of things or of works have risen; nor conversely can the lessee diminish the price if those have decreased.
Yet in this case he can require a greater sum than was agreed if he suffers damage from a wholly unforeseen cause, because contracts of this kind are customarily entered in such a way that the undertaker assumes upon himself ordinary dangers, such as the increased price of things or works, but not extraordinary ones;1 likewise if he committed a manifest error in computing expenses.2
1 Cf. Lehmkuhl I, n. 1127; Genicot I, n. 650.
2 Cf. Lehmkuhl, Casus consc. I, n. 903.