Ukrainian Bishops Recall that Paying Just Wages is a Duty

A “just wage” was the topic of the social program known as “The Open Church,” an initiative whose goal is to show that the Catholic Church knows how to place social questions at the heart of her teaching when needed. 

“An unjust wage is a sin in itself,” declared the Patriarch of Kyiv-Halych, Sviatoslav, recalling that “it is a sin that cries out to heaven,” like the murder of innocents.

The prelate also recalled the teaching of the Church, exhorting all to fight against delays in paying salaries: “Our synod has several times asked employers and authorities to signal that delays in paying their employees’ salaries are inadmissible.”

Salaries are one of the most urgent and painful questions facing the Ukrainian society today, leading many to emigrate in order to make a living in other countries.

Pope Leo XIII was the first to speak of just wages, in his encyclical Rerum Novarum, on May 15, 1891:

[The employer’s] great and principal duty is to give everyone what is just. Doubtless, before deciding whether wages are fair, many things have to be considered; but wealthy owners and all masters of labor should be mindful of this - that to exercise pressure upon the indigent and the destitute for the sake of gain, and to gather one's profit out of the need of another, is condemned by all laws, human and divine. To defraud any one of wages that are his due is a great crime which cries to the avenging anger of Heaven. ‘Behold, the hire of the laborers... which by fraud has been kept back by you, crieth; and the cry of them hath entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth’ (Epistle of St. James, Ch. 5).

The pope’s encyclical warns against the false solutions inspired by Socialism that ruin natural justice and family ties.