§ 2. On Masters of Works and Hired Workmen

1. Both, the master as well as the workman, must observe justice in making and executing the contract.

2. Justice besides obliges the master to preserve safe both the person of the worker, i.e. his body and soul, and his honor; it obliges the worker not to injure the things or reputation of the master.

a) Therefore the master violates justice who, when he can pay more, promises an insufficient salary to a strong and fully useful worker; who does not apply fitting diligence to beware lest from the arrangement of the workshop, from the ordering of labor, some unnecessary danger impend to the health, life, or members of the worker. But detriments which cannot morally be removed must at least be compensated by a greater stipend. - He must also beware from justice lest, from the way in which things are arranged or from license permitted to others, the workers be in a proximate occasion of sinning.

Labor on a feast day, nocturnal labor, labor too prolonged, or that which in some way consumes the powers, apart from agreement, cannot be imposed without necessity and must be compensated by a greater price. An agreement, freely entered into, concerning labor of this kind, although often to be disapproved, nevertheless is not strictly repugnant to justice.

But if there is question of boys or adolescents, neither their own assent nor that of their parents excuses from violated commutative justice the manufacturer who demands of them works too grave, or too prolonged, or too stupefying to the mind.

b) The worker violates justice who injures the instruments, animals, or reputation of the master; who betrays a secret expressly or tacitly promised; who interrupts before the day the works promised.

Yet not rarely today, when a common strike has been declared, individual workmen will be compelled themselves to refuse works.

On strikes. From the end, strikes are illicit which happen for disturbing society, or for extorting a wage beyond the just sum, or any unjust conditions. From the mode, strikes are opposed to commutative justice: a) those by which, before the time established by free agreement, work is ceased, unless they happen for rescuing workers from unjust vexation; b) those which exercise unjust coercion of others. But that coercion is unjust by which, through force, fraud, threats, or strictly harmful means, the other workers are prohibited from labor; or by which the other workers are virtually interdicted from water and fire. From the effects, those strikes are gravely opposed to charity and piety toward the fatherland which happen for a cause not sufficiently grave, or whose happy outcome is too uncertain, or which are announced when a gentler way is available for attaining the intended end. But among the workers some are unwillingly compelled to carry out the strike, and these cannot be accused of injustice; others have a formal part in strikes, but are ignorant of their injustice: in good faith they are immune from formal injustice; others consciously cooperate with injustice: these sin, but, excepting damages which they have caused by their immediate cooperation, in practice they will scarcely have to be obliged to restitution, which for the most part they will not be able to make and which is easily tacitly condoned to them. Then there remain the authors and favorers of illicit strikes, who are guilty of very grave sin and often take upon themselves very grave obligations. - Cf. more in Quaestiones de Iustitia, n. 470-475.

The hiring of works is followed by a bond of closer nearness by which master and worker are joined one with the other: for to the essential society of men, a certain new union has been added. There follows also a debt of quasi-piety in the master, but of observance in the worker. For from the agreement itself, the master moves and directs the workers in order to attaining the end of the work; master and workmen breathe together toward one immediate end. These things cannot happen without some superiority and subjection, which necessarily generate mutual offices of quasi-piety and observance. Indeed, according to various circumstances and persons, those offices can be intensified or remitted; but they cannot be wholly suppressed.

But a certain imitation of masterly society, by which hired workers, in condition and affection, approach household members, is especially consonant with the vows of nature, since it introduces greater unity in the human race and diffuses greater happiness. Cf. Quaest. de Iustitia, n. 467.

The Code contains these two notable canons concerning the present matter.

"Not only parents and others who hold the place of parents, but also masters and sponsors are bound by the obligation of taking care that all subject to them or commended to them be instructed by catechetical instruction" (c. 1335).

"All, and especially clerics, religious, and administrators of ecclesiastical things, in the hiring of works must assign to workers an honest and just wage; take care that these same have suitable space of time for piety; by no agreement draw them away from domestic care and the study of thrift, nor impose upon them more work than their powers can bear, nor that kind which conflicts with age and sex" (c. 1524).

First also, in the international treaty of peace after the bloody war, declarations are read which protect the rights and utilities of workers.