daf bit: Bava Metzia 110

[cellio]

The talmud is discussing the payment of workers' wages; the employer is responsible for paying the day laborers he hires that night (not holding their wages until morning). The g'mara raises the case of agency: if an employer tells his neighbor "go and hire me laborers" and they are not paid on time, who has transgressed? The answer appears to be that neither transgresses the commandment for prompt payment -- the employer did not himself hire them and the neighbor did not benefit from the labor. However, the neighbor is nonetheless responsible for the wages unless he said "the employer is responsible for your wages". Yehudah b. Meremar used to instruct his attendant to say this explicitly (so there would be no risk to his attendant). (110b-111a)

It seems to me that the case here must be one of uncompensated agency. If the neighbor gets a fee like the modern contract house or headhunter, I would expect that to be different because he is benefiting. That's not covered here, though.

Comments

[siderea]

It seems to me that the case here must be one of uncompensated agency. If the neighbor gets a fee like the modern contract house or headhunter, I would expect that to be different because he is benefiting.

Waitwhat.... no. If a headhunter gets me a job and the employer stiffs me, the headhunter isn't -- and shouldn't be -- liable. If a contract firm hires me to work for their client, and the contract firm stiffs me, the client isn't -- and shouldn't be -- liable; if the client stiffs them, they still have to pay me, and on time, anyways.

In other words: you need to know who your employer is. They're the only ones who have a contractual reponsibility to pay you on time.

(MA is, IIRC, a 30 day state.)

So two questions:

1) How do modern orthodox small business owners handle this rule, today?

2) Are there penulties specified for non-payment of wages? MA law is way seriously strict about it: its criminal law, and can wind the offending parties butts in jail.

[zevabe.livejournal.com]

A) With regard to financial arrangements, common buisness practice somewhat trumps halakha (this works based on the assumption that both parties implicitly stipulate to it unless they specify otherwise)

B) The requirement is that you pay your employees in a timely fashion. If our agreement is that I'll pay you in full on completion of the job and not a cent before, even if the job takes years, my obligation is to pay the day you finish.

C) The only penalty is that you failed to fulfill the mitzvah/mitzvot to pay on time. For those who count this as violating a negative commandment there would likely be lashes. However, any financial penalty for failure to pay on time would constitute usury. Obviously the wages are also still owed.

D) You are discussing total failure to pay, as opposed to a delay in paying.

[siderea]

D) You are discussing total failure to pay, as opposed to a delay in paying.

No, not in Massachusetts I'm not. As I understand it, which of course may be imperfectly, if you have failed to pay after 30 days, the state assumes you're not going to and proceeds accordingly.

(I have a fun illustrative story from my days temping. Agency screwed up my pay check in an entirely predictable way. I complained that I'd been stiffed. The next pay check made up for the amount they shorted me -- and a bit more. So I let them know they'd over-paid me when I was next in the office, and they were like "NO THAT'S OK, YOU KEEP IT, WE'RE ALL GOOD", and very nervous and urgent about it. And I thought that was odd, until I found out what they probably thought might happen to them if we were still arguing over whether or not who owed whom by 30 days after that timecard. At that point, we were three weeks out.)

[cellio]

Wow, interesting. I've never been a contractor or a temp, but I'm pretty sure PA isn't that good to employees.

[cellio]

I think the key lesson here, as you pointed out, is "know who your employer is". It seems to me counter-intuitive that the neighbor who played match-maker would be on the hook. I can buy it in the case where the agent gets something out of the deal because the threat might mitigate against the tendency to make known-to-be-bad matches just to collect your fee. I would expect that the helpful neighbor can more easily make it the employer's problem than the compensated agent can. But I am speculating here; I don't know how that really goes.

Headhunter was a bad example, I now realize.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Wholly off topic, a quote I saw that I thought you'd find interesting:

Rabbi Yannai ( Talmud Yerushalmi Sanhedrin 4:2) taught: "If Torah were immutable it could not have endured. Once Moses pleaded: 'Master of the Universe, reveal unto me the final truth in each problem of doctrine and law,' To which the Holy one replied: 'There are no pre-existent final truths . . . the truth is the considered judgment of the majority of authoritative interpreters in each generation.' "

[cellio]

Cool -- thanks!

There is a midrash, though I either forgot or never knew the source, where Moshe asks God to show him the future and he's shown a yeshiva where some unrecognizable bit of torah is expounded, ending with the assertion that this is as it was told to Moshe on Har Sinai. The midrash as I recall it has God doing the moral equivalent of a shrug when Moshe comments on this.

[magid.livejournal.com]

What I remember of that story is Moshe being confounded by whatever is being discussed, and comforted when he hears himself cited. That story feels like it has a different emphasis to me, more about the chain of transmission than on the current link, as it were.