The Contract of Rendering Certain Services

As regards agreements about certain services to be rendered, it is sufficient to note these things: one who renders to someone a service already owed to another - for example, one who leads several persons at the same time to some place, or brings a message to several persons at the same time - can ask payment from each. For since the work rendered here and now is ordered wholly and entirely to each one, and is useful to each, it does not seem unjust to ask compensation from each one (St. Alphonsus, III, 862). Nevertheless he cannot demand the price twice for that which he himself bought only once, for example for a meal, for a carriage, because such a price is demanded after the manner of restoring damage, and therefore ought not to exceed the damage itself.

549. The letting of services and the hiring of workers, or the contract of labor (louage de services et de travail, contrat de travail; dienstverhuring, arbeidsovereenkomst, loonverdrag) is a contract in which for a certain labor a just price is paid, or a contract by which workers oblige themselves to furnish a certain labor in favor of another for a time, for a determined price (a. 1710; 1779-1780). This contract differs essentially from the letting of a work:

1. by reason of the object, which is not the thing produced but the personal labor itself to be furnished, or rather the operative power and activity which one lets to another for a determined time; while in the letting of a work the object is the work itself to be produced, which is the effect of labor;

2. by reason of the letting itself, which is made from the worker to the owner, since the worker offers and lets his labor, which the owner hires; while on the contrary, in the undertaking of a work, the letting is made from the owner to the worker, since the owner offers and lets the work to be made, which the worker undertakes and hires.¹

¹ On the contract of labor, among others, there can be consulted economists such as Liberatore, Perin, Brants, Cauwes, Antoine, Falon; philosophers and cultivators of natural law such as Meyer, Cathrein, Castelein, Rothe, Schwalm; sociologists such as Weiss, Soziale Frage und Soziale Ordnung, and Biederlack, Die Soziale Frage; theologians, such as de Gryse, De contractu conductionis; Lehmkuhl, Le Contrat entre patrons et ouvriers et les greves; Vermeersch, in Quaestiones de Iustitia, q. 10; Msgr. Doutreloux, Lettre Pastorale sur la Question ouvriere; Card. Zigliara, Epist. ad Card. Goossens 1891; Pottier, De Iure et Iustitia, and La morale catholique et les questions sociales d'aujourd'hui; Waffelaert, in Coll. Brug., Jan. 1901; also dissertations or special works, such as Bruin, Het Arbeidsloon, in Studien, 1892; Pesch, Lohnvertrag und gerechte Lohn, in Stimmen, 1897; Perin, Etude sur le juste salaire; Beauregard, Essai sur la theorie des Salaires; Garriguet, Le Contrat de Travail; Le Salaire; A. Verhaegen, Le minimum de salaire, 1892; Vliebergh, in Belfort, 1913; Bus, Relatief Gezinsloon, with annotations by Aangenent in De Katholiek, 1922; Gougnard, Le probleme du juste salaire, 1923 [printed: 1293]; Koenraadt, Rechtvaardig sociales Arbeidsloon, 1929; Rutten, La Doctrine sociale de l'Eglise; and also laws passed among diverse peoples, as the Belgian law of 10 March 1900 de contractu laboris, and 7 Aug. 1922 de contractu famulatus et ministerii professionalis.

Concerning the nature of the contract of labor there has sometimes been doubt:

A. Certain economists have held it as a purchase-sale, by which the worker sells his services, or the exercise of his own activity, for some time.

Nevertheless this cannot be admitted; for 1. the object of sale is merchandise, but human labor in the proper sense is not merchandise; 2. by sale a thing and the dominion of the thing are transferred, but by the contract of labor there is not transferred the power of operating or dominion over it, but only the use of it is promised. Therefore it is not a sale, but a letting. Nor should you say that the fruit of labor can be sold, or that part which the worker has in the effect produced; for this is the proper object of the letting of a work, by which it differs precisely from the letting of services.

B. Others wish, or rather would wish, that it be a contract of partnership, by force of which the owner contributes his capital and the workers their services for completing a common work, and for dividing among themselves the gain received therefrom; which, they say, agrees better with the dignity of workers and with a more equitable division of gains.

A contract of partnership entered into between owners and workers could be conceived, and it would be desirable that such a contract be more widely diffused in the future; nevertheless, as regards fact, the matter does not so stand in the present state of affairs; indeed such a contract generally is impossible. For a) on the one hand, owners contend that the successful outcome of industry depends especially upon the wise management of one supreme director, and therefore they are unwilling to have workers as partners, lest they be forced to adopt their counsels; b) on the other hand, workers cannot take upon themselves the risks of industry, as is essential to the contract of partnership: for, needing a daily and certain wage for sustenance, they cannot wait until the amount of gain and loss is determined and equally divided. Therefore owners take upon themselves a twofold risk; and against that twofold risk workers are made secure: 1. the price is paid to them at once, before the things made are sold; 2. a determined price is paid, whether the outcome of the sale is happy or unhappy. Hence it is just that not the whole of what they have produced be paid to them, but that the price be proportionately diminished: namely, workers renounce a greater benefit so that they may be preserved from damage.² c) Besides, in certain circumstances a contract of partnership is impossible, and only a contract of letting is possible, namely in the case in which it is not entered into for profitable business, as in domestic service or in constructing a work, for example, a house.

² Prummer well notes, Th. M. II, n. 306: "Owners contribute not only money, but also intelligence (at least commonly superior) and many services. Besides, they are compelled to expose their own fortune to very great dangers and often labor for a rather long time without any profit, indeed with damage. On the contrary, workers incur no risk and must receive a daily wage. Therefore it would be inequitable if in prosperous affairs they had a proportionate part of the profit, but in adverse affairs the owner alone had to furnish the whole damage."

C. A few others think that the contract of labor is unnamed: on the part of the worker, I do that you may give; on the part of the master, I give that you may do, insofar as workers oblige themselves to do something for a certain price.

This has a certain appearance of truth, because of the special nature and dignity of human labor. Nevertheless Roman law and modern codes, as also theologians and jurists, hold the contract as a true letting, because, namely, in it the use of a certain thing is promised and conceded for a certain price; which is the very definition of letting.

Therefore the contract of labor is a true letting. For man has full dominion of his labor, or of the exercise and use of his faculties (n. 167). Therefore he can concede that use to another, or let it for a price, indeed also alienate it, and of itself in perpetuity, as in servitude; although this today has no force, as being positively prohibited in all present-day law (a. 1780).

It is indeed, by reason of the object, a letting of a special character, since human services are not common merchandise, but carry something human before them, and therefore must be ruled by other laws than merely commercial things. But, although human labor far surpasses the economic order, and is not simply to be held as merchandise if it is considered as a human action, nevertheless it can be considered as causing economic utility, and under this respect one can make agreement concerning it for a wage (I-II, q. 114, a. 1). And although the worker himself can dispose of labor, as it is a human action, altogether freely, nevertheless not always if in it there is considered the economic utility, which could be necessary to him for sustenance. These aspects are not to be separated, as Leo XIII well notes in the encyclical Rerum novarum.

"And so labor has, as it were, two notes implanted by nature in man, namely that it is personal, because the acting force inheres in the person, and is altogether proper to him by whom it is exercised, and for whose utility it is born; then, that it is necessary, for this reason, that the fruit of labors is needed by man for sustaining life: but the nature of things itself, to which above all one must obey, commands that life be sustained.

"Now, if it is considered only from that part according to which it is personal, there is no doubt that it is within the worker's full right to define more narrowly the measure of the agreed wage: for just as he gives his services by will, so by will he can be content with a slight wage for his services, or with plainly none. But one must judge far otherwise if, with the notion of personality, the notion of necessity is joined, separable from it indeed in thought, but not in reality. In reality, to remain in life is the common duty of each one, to which it is a crime to be wanting. Hence there necessarily arises the right of finding those things by which life is sustained; and for the lowest person the faculty of these things is supplied by no means except a wage sought by labor. Let it be granted, therefore, that worker and master freely consent to the same agreement, and expressly to the measure of the wage; nevertheless there is always underlying something from natural justice, and this greater and older than the free will of those making agreement, namely, that the wage ought not be inadequate for sustaining the worker, frugal indeed and of good morals."

Therefore it is clear that labor is not to be held merely as merchandise without any relation to the person and his conditions, but as a legitimate, and often the only, means by which the worker can sustain life for himself, or also for his own.