Duties and responsibilities of employees and employers— part 2 of a 4-part series

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Rev. Msgr. Gerald E. Twaddell, D.Phil., KCHS

Contributor

Turning to the second of the concerns noted at the beginning of his encyclical “Rerum Novarum,” namely the changes in the relationship between employers and employees, Pope Leo XIII, first observes that another great mistake in his day is the assumption that the owning class and the working class are necessarily in conflict. In reality, “capital cannot do without labor, nor labor without capital.”

Mutual agreement between the two leads to “the beauty of good order, while perpetual conflict necessarily produces confusion and savage barbarity.” The most effective intermediary in disputes is the Church’s teaching on the duties of each side to the other, “especially the obligations of justice.” (§ 19)

In Section 20, Pope Leo XIII catalogs duties flowing from the obligations of justice.

Workers duties are the following:

  • to perform fully and faithfully the work equitably agreed upon;
  • never to harm the property, nor outrage the person of the employer;
  • never to resort to violence, riot or disorder in defending their cause;
  • never to rely on people with evil principles who mislead them with empty promises and foolish hopes of impressive results that lead only to “useless regrets and grievous loss.”

Employers are duty-bound to the following:

  • never to look down upon their workers as though they were in bondage;
  • always to respect the dignity of every person;
  • never “misuse workers as though they were things in the pursuit of gain,” because working for pay is honorable, not shameful, since it allows the person to earn a decent livelihood;
  • never shamefully and inhumanely to value workers solely for their physical powers;
  • keep in mind the good of the worker’s soul by seeing to it that workers
    • have time to attend to their religious duties,
    • are not exposed to corrupting influences,
    • not be led to neglect home and family,
    • not be led to squander their earnings;
  • never overwork employees beyond their strength;
  • never employ people in work unsuited to their sex or age;
  • most importantly, the employer’s “great and principal duty is to give everyone what is just.”

This last point leads to the condemnation of several unjust practices regarding the fair remuneration of workers, namely:

  • exercising pressure on the indigent and destitute for the sake of gain;
  • gathering one’s profit from the need of others;
  • defrauding anyone of the wages they are due;
  • cutting down the worker’s earnings by force, fraud, or usurious dealing.

Each of these injustices “is a great crime which cries to the avenging anger of Heaven … because the laboring man is, as a rule, weak and unprotected, and because his slender means should, in proportion to their scantiness, be accounted sacred.” (§ 20)

Beyond these demands of the natural law, the Holy Father reminds us that the Church proposes still higher precepts rooted in the hope for eternal life brought by our Savior. Every person is called to use the things of this world, however abundant or scarce, out of a motive of virtue and in pursuit of merit. (§ 21)

“Riches do not bring freedom from sorrow and are of no avail for eternal happiness, but rather are obstacles.” The pope cites St. Thomas Aquinas who teaches that, “Man should not consider his material possessions as his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need. Whence the Apostle says (1 Timothy 6:17): ‘Command the rich of this world … to offer with no stint, to apportion largely.’” “It is a duty,” Pope Leo XIII proclaims, “not of justice (save in extreme cases), but of Christian charity” on which Christ will judge us. The person who has received an abundance of material goods or gifts of the mind from God’s bounty “has received them for the purpose of using them for the perfecting of his own nature, and at the same time, that he may employ them, as the steward of God’s providence, for the benefit of others.” (§22)

In contrast, those who lack the gifts of fortune learn from the Church “that in God’s sight poverty is no disgrace, and that there is nothing to be ashamed of in earning their bread by labor.” Christ, after all, “for our sakes became poor” (2 Cor 8:9) and labored much of His life as a carpenter. (§23) When we contemplate this divine Model, we see that “the true worth and nobility of man lies in his moral qualities, that is in virtue; that virtue is, moreover, the common inheritance of men, equally within the reach of high and low, rich and poor.”

When all people come to this realization, the pride of the well-to-do will be diminished and they will become generous to the less well-off, who in turn will moderate their desires. The separation and opposition between the two groups will tend to disappear in favor of friendly cooperation. (§24) The Church does her utmost to hand on these principles, relying on the tools given by Christ to reach people’s innermost hearts and consciences, to lead them to the love of God and their fellow human beings, to break down every barrier to virtue. (§ 26)

History displays evidence of such effects. For example, Christian institutions from the earliest centuries managed to renew civil society by the light of the Gospel message, lifting up and restoring life to the human race wherever it was proclaimed. Nothing so great had been known before. The only way society today can be healed of its class oppositions is by a return to Christian life and institutions that had been undermined and rejected in the name of “enlightenment.” (§ 27)

The work that the Church undertakes goes beyond the spiritual to address also the temporal and earthly conditions of workers. She is particularly concerned that the poor be helped to rise above poverty and wretchedness to achieve a better life. Christian morality “powerfully restrains the greed of possession and the thirst for pleasure — twin plagues.” (§ 28)

In addition, the Church from the time of the apostles established many means to offer relief from poverty, whether the voluntary sharing of goods seen in the Acts of the Apostles, the establishment of the diaconate, or the collections gathered by St. Paul. (§ 29) The pope lamented that in his day many sought “to blame and condemn the Church for such eminent charity,” wishing instead to have the State supply such relief. (§ 30) The effective way to achieve the goal of reducing the effects of poverty would be to obtain the cooperation of all human agencies to be of one mind with the Church and act together according to each’s capacity. Part of that effort would be to look into what role the State should play. (§ 31)

In the next article the duties and responsibilities of the State that Pope Leo XIII discerned will be examined.