But is it the government’s job to ensure a just wage?

ut Alt!” a read­er asks. “Isn’t the just wage a pri­vate con­tract between employ­er and employ­ee? Does the Church real­ly say that it is the State’s job?”

Well, you asked.

Now, if a man does not pay his hire a just wage, he com­mits a sin that cries to heav­en for vengeance:

The cat­e­chet­i­cal tra­di­tion also recalls that there are “sins that cry to heav­en”: the blood of Abel; the sin of the Sodomites; the cry of the peo­ple oppressed in Egypt; the cry of the for­eign­er, the wid­ow, and the orphan; injus­tice to the wage earn­er. (CCC 1867)

This teach­ing the Church finds in James 5:4: “Behold, the wages of the labor­ers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the har­vesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.”

“But Alt! Is it real­ly the job of the State to pass wage laws? Does the Church say that? Where? Is that not pru­den­tial judg­ment?

No, it is not “pru­den­tial judg­ment”; and yes, the Church does say that. Even Cri­sis Mag­a­zine, hard­ly a hotbed of Big Gov­ern­ment apolo­get­ics, agrees that the Church says that. Fr. Robert Johansen says:

Work­ers are due their wages as a mat­ter of jus­tice. The Cat­e­chism tells us that “a just wage is the legit­i­mate fruit of work” (2434). But a just wage is not that which will mere­ly pro­vide suf­fi­cient food, cloth­ing, and shel­ter. To live at a sub­sis­tence lev­el is to live at the min­i­mum con­di­tion of human dig­ni­ty, and, as St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in the Sum­ma The­o­log­i­ca, “No one is oblig­ed to live unbe­com­ing­ly.”

“In the Catholic tra­di­tion,” Fr. Johansen goes on,

the state must, as the Cat­e­chism teach­es, “defend and pro­mote the com­mon good of civ­il soci­ety, its cit­i­zens, and inter­me­di­ate bod­ies” (1910). Fur­ther­more, “the state has a respon­si­bil­i­ty for its cit­i­zens’ well-being” (2372). Toward these ends, the state has a legit­i­mate role to play in the order­ing of eco­nom­ic life.

“The state must.” “As the Cat­e­chism teach­es.” The Church gives no room to wig­gle on this point.

Pope Leo XIII writes on this in Rerum Novarum:

[T]he Church improves and bet­ters the con­di­tion of the work­ing man by means of numer­ous orga­ni­za­tions; does her best to enlist the ser­vices of all class­es in dis­cussing and endeav­or­ing to fur­ther in the most prac­ti­cal way, the inter­ests of the work­ing class­es; and con­sid­ers that for this pur­pose recourse should be had, in due mea­sure and degree, to the inter­ven­tion of the law and of State author­i­ty. (16)

Some, putting up the armor of polit­i­cal the­o­ry against the teach­ing of the Church, will object here that wages are a pri­vate con­tract. If a man thinks his wage is unjust, he can ask for a raise. Just like that! Or if his boss is a tight­wad, he can find anoth­er job. Just like that! Sim­ple. Boss­es and mag­nates nev­er exploit­ed labor in the good old US of A, before there were laws to pre­vent it! That just did not hap­pen. Not ever!

Leo XIII would find such think­ing naïve. “The rich,” he says, “must reli­gious­ly refrain from cut­ting down the work­men’s earn­ings, whether by force, by fraud, or by usu­ri­ous deal­ing; and with all the greater rea­son because the labor­ing man is, as a rule, weak and unpro­tect­ed.” (RN 20)

He has no pow­er to bar­gain with­out state pro­tec­tion. Only the civ­il law, in Leo’s view, has the pow­er pro­tect the labor­er from an unjust wage. Only the civ­il law can make sure that the rich do not take advan­tage of the poor.

Pope St. John Paul II also writes on this in Cen­tes­imus Annus:

These gen­er­al obser­va­tions also apply to the role of the State in the eco­nom­ic sec­tor. Eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty, espe­cial­ly the activ­i­ty of a mar­ket econ­o­my, can­not be con­duct­ed in an insti­tu­tion­al, juridi­cal or polit­i­cal vac­u­um. On the con­trary, it pre­sup­pos­es sure guar­an­tees of indi­vid­ual free­dom and pri­vate prop­er­ty, as well as a sta­ble cur­ren­cy and effi­cient pub­lic ser­vices. Hence the prin­ci­ple task of the State is to guar­an­tee this secu­ri­ty, so that those who work and pro­duce can enjoy the fruits of their labours and thus feel encour­aged to work effi­cient­ly and hon­est­ly. …

Anoth­er task of the State is that of over­see­ing and direct­ing the exer­cise of human rights in the eco­nom­ic sec­tor. How­ev­er, pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty in this area belongs not to the State but to indi­vid­u­als and to the var­i­ous groups and asso­ci­a­tions which make up soci­ety. The State could not direct­ly ensure the right to work for all its cit­i­zens unless it con­trolled every aspect of eco­nom­ic life and restrict­ed the free ini­tia­tive of indi­vid­u­als. [Now here is the key part.] This does not mean, how­ev­er, that the State has no com­pe­tence in this domain, as was claimed by those who argued against any rules in the eco­nom­ic sphere. Rather, the State has a duty to sus­tain busi­ness activ­i­ties by cre­at­ing con­di­tions which will ensure job oppor­tu­ni­ties, by stim­u­lat­ing those activ­i­ties where they are lack­ing or by sup­port­ing them in moments of cri­sis.” (48)

This is the state’s duty, says John Paul II. It is not just what the state may do, but what the state must do.

The Com­pendi­um of the Social Doc­trine of the Church also speaks of the state’s role:

250. In order to pro­tect this rela­tion­ship between fam­i­ly and work, an ele­ment that must be appre­ci­at­ed and safe­guard­ed is that of a fam­i­ly wage, a wage suf­fi­cient to main­tain a fam­i­ly and allow it to live decent­ly. Such a wage must also allow for sav­ings that will per­mit the acqui­si­tion of prop­er­ty as a guar­an­tee of free­dom. The right to prop­er­ty is close­ly con­nect­ed with the exis­tence of fam­i­lies, which pro­tect them­selves from need thanks also to sav­ings and to the build­ing up of fam­i­ly prop­er­ty. There can be sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ways to make a fam­i­ly wage a con­crete real­i­ty. Var­i­ous forms of impor­tant social pro­vi­sions help to bring it about, for exam­ple, fam­i­ly sub­si­dies and oth­er con­tri­bu­tions for depen­dent fam­i­ly mem­bers, and also remu­ner­a­tion for the domes­tic work done in the home by one of the par­ents.

Did you see what I saw? The CSD describes a just wage in terms of “the right to prop­er­ty.” I know of no con­ser­v­a­tive or lib­er­tar­i­an who would deny that income is prop­er­ty, and that a legit­i­mate func­tion of the State is to pro­tect the right to prop­er­ty. Even Ayn Rand says that. How such folks exclude a just wage from prop­er­ty rights, I can not guess.

The CSD con­tin­ues:

The rights of work­ers, like all oth­er rights, are based on the nature of the human per­son and on his tran­scen­dent dig­ni­ty. The Church’s social Mag­is­teri­um has seen fit to list some of these rights, in the hope that they will be rec­og­nized in juridi­cal sys­tems: the right to a just wage; the right to rest; the right “to a work­ing envi­ron­ment and to man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es which are not harm­ful to the work­ers’ phys­i­cal health or to their moral integri­ty. (301)

And so on, includ­ing a right to unem­ploy­ment and dis­abil­i­ty insur­ance, a pen­sion, social secu­ri­ty, and unions. But with regard to the just wage, the CSD also scoffs at any talk that this is a mere pri­vate con­tract:

The sim­ple agree­ment between employ­ee and employ­er with regard to the amount of pay to be received is not suf­fi­cient for the agreed-upon salary to qual­i­fy as a “just wage,” because a just wage “must not be below the lev­el of sub­sis­tence” of the work­er: nat­ur­al jus­tice pre­cedes and is above the free­dom of the con­tract. (302)

(Did you mark that last part? Nat­ur­al jus­tice trumps free­dom of con­tract. Note that. But the CCD goes on.)

The eco­nom­ic well-being of a coun­try is not mea­sured exclu­sive­ly by the quan­ti­ty of goods it pro­duces but also by tak­ing into account the man­ner in which they are pro­duced and the lev­el of equi­ty in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of income, which should allow every­one access to what is nec­es­sary for their per­son­al devel­op­ment and per­fec­tion. An equi­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of income is to be sought on the basis of cri­te­ria not mere­ly of com­mu­ta­tive jus­tice but also of social jus­tice that is, con­sid­er­ing, beyond the objec­tive val­ue of the work ren­dered, the human dig­ni­ty of the sub­jects who per­form it. Authen­tic eco­nom­ic well-being is pur­sued also by means of suit­able social poli­cies for the redis­tri­b­u­tion of income which, tak­ing gen­er­al con­di­tions into account, look at mer­it as well as at the need of each cit­i­zen. (303)

Some will object here that the per­son who serves you your fries at McDon­ald’s is not doing work worth $15 an hour. But the Church tells us that mere com­mu­ta­tive jus­tice is insuf­fi­cient. A just wage is deter­mined by more than “the objec­tive val­ue of the work itself” but by “the human dig­ni­ty of the sub­jects who per­form it.”

As much as abor­tion is an affront to “the nature of the human per­son and his tran­scen­dent dig­ni­ty,” so is an unjust wage.

And is this the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the State? You bet it is:

351. The action of the State and of oth­er pub­lic author­i­ties must be con­sis­tent with the prin­ci­ple of sub­sidiar­i­ty and cre­ate sit­u­a­tions favourable to the free exer­cise of eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty. It must also be inspired by the prin­ci­ple of sol­i­dar­i­ty and estab­lish lim­its for the auton­o­my of the par­ties in order to defend those who are weak­er. …

352. The fun­da­men­tal task of the State in eco­nom­ic mat­ters is that of deter­min­ing an appro­pri­ate juridi­cal frame­work for reg­u­lat­ing eco­nom­ic affairs, in order to safe­guard “the pre­req­ui­sites of a free econ­o­my, which pre­sumes a cer­tain equal­i­ty between the par­ties, such that one par­ty would not be so pow­er­ful as prac­ti­cal­ly to reduce the oth­er to sub­servience”. Eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty, above all in a free mar­ket con­text, can­not be con­duct­ed in an insti­tu­tion­al, juridi­cal or polit­i­cal vac­u­um.

Above all in a free mar­ket, the Church says, eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty can not be con­duct­ed in iso­la­tion from civ­il law to pro­tect the rights of work­ers. And one of those rights is a just wage.

“It is nec­es­sary for the mar­ket and the State,” says the CSD, “to act in con­cert” (353):

In fact, the free mar­ket can have a ben­e­fi­cial influ­ence on the gen­er­al pub­lic only when the State is orga­nized in such a man­ner that it defines and gives direc­tion to eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment.

Does the Church tell us that the State must help ensure a just wage? You betcha.