Wages
No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to stay on top of everything that needs to happen in order to make my household run smoothly. Like many working moms, I sometimes feel like a poser. As though I am pretending to be one of those moms who really has it all together when in reality…I don’t.
Because I can’t get everything done that really does need to get done, I have a woman who comes into my home once a week to clean, polish, sweep, scrub, and do laundry. She is polite, pleasant, and honest and my life really does run more smoothly as a result of her weekly visits.
And yet I dread the mornings that she is due to come to house because of the stress. You know what I’m talking about. The “oh my God, the cleaning girl will quit on the spot if she sees that the laundry she folded LAST WEEK somehow never made it into the drawers not to mention all the other stuff that has piled up!!!” stress. So we run around like proverbial headless-chickens in the hopes of fooling the woman we pay to clean our house into thinking that we are actually neat and organized.
Which brings me to the following dilemma. There has been a week or two when we just couldn’t get everything clean in time and so we cancelled our appointment at the very last minute. Question – do we owe our cleaning girl her salary if we have cancelled?
This seemingly easy question became a sore point between me and my husband. He felt that we were not obligated to pay her wages. I strongly disagreed. For some reason, it just didn’t seem right to dock her wages just because we didn’t have our act together. He checked with people around his office and apparently they all agreed with him. I checked with some of my girlfriends who reported having similar disagreements with their husbands. So I felt as though I was in good company. Still, it nagged at me and I decided to see what Jewish Law has to say because Jewish Law has something to say about EVERYTHING!
It turns out that the obligation to pay an employee in a timely fashion is mentioned five separate times in the Bible. In fact, the employee in the Torah is a day-laborer and the employer is commanded to pay his (or her) wages by the time that the sun touches down on the day the work was performed. Unlike a lot of the laws given in the Torah where the rationale is unclear, the reason for not withholding wages is given. To delay the payment might cause undue financial burden on the employee. Workers often struggle to make ends meet and missing just one day’s pay can make it difficult to cover basic necessities. To cancel at the last moment prevents the housekeeper (or any other day laborer) from filling that slot with another wage-earning appointment.
And if that is not enough to convince you to pay on time, consider this: Jewish Law takes a very hard line when it comes to this issue. "Don't withhold the wages of the poor and needy of your brethren or the sojourner in your land in your gates. On his day give his wage, and let not the sun set on it; for he is poor, and he sets his soul on it. Lest he call on you to God and it will be to you a sin" (Deuteronomy 24:14-15). The Talmud understands this injunction to mean that anyone who withholds the wages of a worker, it's as if he has taken the worker’s soul (Babylonian Talmud. Bava Metzia 112a). His soul. Here’s how the reasoning goes -- when a person is hired to provide a service in exchange for payment, he has entered into an equal relationship. When the payment is withheld, it is as if the person has been enslaved…making you the enslaver!
One of the things that I try to remember when “asking around” is that Judaism often provides an ethical framework that is narrower than the American one. One of the benefits of being Jewish is that our values and laws demand ethical behaviour in matters both sacred and ordinary. And it’s by such actions that we can be a light unto the nations.
As it is written, "Don't say to your fellow, 'Go away, and come back later; I'll give you tomorrow' if you have with you [the means]" (Proverbs 3:28).
Rivster is a young, hip, mother-of-three, living in California. As the Associate Rabbi of Congregation B'nai Tzedek (www.cbtfv.org), she is one-half of the first father-daughter Rabbinic team to serve a congregation. Read her wonderful blog Frume Sarah's World and get to know her better on the MJM Social Network!
Do you have questions for our MJM Rabbi? Email us at meredith@modernjewishmom.com.
