***I delayed the posting of this essay because I had second thoughts on its usefulness, let me know if this PoP series is worth continuing***
TEXT: Matt. 20:1-16 & Liberty of Contract Clause
Article 1, Section 10: No State shall...pass any bill...or law impairing the obligations of contacts.
I bring up the previous clause because in this parable liberty of contract is the first implication I noticed. The owner promises the first set of workers a certain wage and they agree (a contract). A third party, the later workers, do not change the terms of the first contract, nor does the first contract affect the payment of the later workers: the later workers do not have a pro-rated payment in relation to the wages of the others. In the Constitution we see a somewhat similar principle in the aforementioned clause, but in this case the third party is the state, whereas it is other workers in the parable. The Supreme Court had followed this principle to the degree that the minimum wage law had been ruled unconstitutional. In the decision of Adkins v. Children's Hospital an attempt at minimum wage was ruled unconstitutional (in 1923). In the ruling, Justice George Sutherland, speaking for the majority says, "freedom of contract is... the general rule."
Second principle from the parable: Equal pay for Unequal work. Note we normally hear Equal pay for Equal work, but in this parable we see a slight variation. Of course, all the workers received the same pay that day, regardless of how many hours they worked. I think from that principle we could logically state the converse: Unequal work for Equal pay, but from these alone I don't know if we could derive: Unequal pay for equal work. We might discuss this later.
Third principle: Some jobs aren't 9-5. If my understanding of the Biblical timing is correct, then the first set of workers hired at the first hour had a 12 hour day. Mind you this is labor intensive agricultural work. Do you think this would be allowed in present day America, with the laws limiting number of hours worked? I'm beginning to see that the implications of this parable would give OSHA terrible fits.
Wow, I am not done yet, but I will post now anyways and finish later.
Ready, Set, Plant? A Request for Dialogue
12 years ago
"And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and to them he said, 'You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.'"(vv 3-4 ESV)
ReplyDeleteSo the workers from the third hour got "whatever is right", while the workers early in the morning got no such promise. Did the workers from the first hour have a legitimate beef that they were contracted at too low of a rate?
Moral of this story: unionize! (sarcasm...)
My assumption is that the very first set of workers got what was right by being paid a denarius. So the workers from the third hour on got a righter deal. Actually, the owner in these later cases was being generous. But it is interesting that the terms of the later contracts were unspecified, vague, and ambiguous; regardless though, it was agreed upon by both parties. To answer your question directly, no the first set of workers can't complain about their pay. Will hit up unions later, maybe.
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