SUCCESS KEY #11 – PAY YOUR WORKERS THE RIGHT WAGES
Paying the right wages to labourers is an issue that is long overdue for serious discussion. It is a demonic oppressive system that legalize hiring people and paying them what is not enough for them to live on while few others continue to squander the fruits and proceeds of the labour of the masses.
We live and operate in a system that civil service is gradually becoming more terrible than slavery, a system that legalizes poverty in services.
Those who are in the labour market without the advantage of joining the civil or public service are hiring themselves out like slaves and not like workers by so many standards.
A construction company will hire masons and pay them #5,000 for 8hrs of hard work per day, that is about 7USD, less than a dollar per hour. This same company in another country will pay masons with the same skill set 25USD minimum per hour, which means 200USD for eight hours of the same job with same set of skills.
Now, the amazing aspect of it is that the job in question will be awarded two times or even three times the amount it would be awarded in another country, where does the money go?
One would have expected that awarding the job higher, the workers would have been paid better, but no, they are driven around as slaves and given daily targets on an amount that is not enough to be called ‘take home pay’, because it can barely take you home.
The Bible has several verses that talk about paying the right wages to workers. Here are some of them:
Deuteronomy 24:14-15: “You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your brothers or one of the sojourners who are in your land within your towns. You shall give him his wages on the same day, before the sun sets (for he is poor and counts on it), lest he cry against you to the Lord, and you be guilty of sin.”
You are not to take advantage of the fact that there are no jobs in town to make a man to sweat out all day for what cannot buy peanut when you have been handsomely paid for the job.
Proverbs 3:27-28: “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it. Do not say to your neighbor, ‘Go, and come again, tomorrow I will give it’—when you have it with you.”
Jeremiah 22:13: “Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice, who uses his neighbor’s service without pay and does not give him his wages.”
When you know the right amount that he is worth, and yet you pay him little to nothing taking advantage of the fact that he is needy, it is wickedness.
Malachi 3:5: “Then I will draw near to you for judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and against the adulterers and against those who swear falsely, and against those who oppress the wage earner in his wages, the widow and the orphan, and those who turn aside the alien and do not fear me,” says the Lord of hosts.”
James 5:4: “Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.”
It is now an open secret that each successive government keeps back workers wages by fraud; and this fraud is carried out by willfully devaluing the currency while keeping the minimum wage constant over time.
Now consider a man that joined the civil service in 1983 with a salary of #500. That was equivalent of 700USD. He labours through the ranks and retires as a level 12 officer in 2018 after 35 years of service with a salary of #210,000. That is equivalent of 265USD. This man struggled to rise through the ranks while the government keeps reducing his pay for 35yrs. This is wickedness!
1 Timothy 5:18: “For the Scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,’ and, ‘The laborer deserves his wages.’”
The labourer deserves wages and not handouts, a system that is designed to cheat labourers of their real wages can not escape the judgement of God, it is only a matter of time. You can give your wife 50million for shopping and you pay a family man that works for you 50,000 for a whole month, you are not far from God’s judgement.
Ephesians 6:9: “Masters, do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him.”
Matthew 20:1-16: This is a parable that Jesus told about a landowner who hired workers for his vineyard at different times of the day, but paid them all the same amount at the end. Some of the workers who worked longer complained that they should receive more than those who worked less. But the landowner said that he was not being unfair, because he paid them what they agreed on. He also said that he had the right to do what he wanted with his own money. The point of this parable is to show that God’s grace is generous and sovereign, and that he rewards people according to his own will, not according to human standards.
Yes, you have the right to pay what you like, especially if you agreed on that, but do not take undue advantage of the poor because you know he is needy and can do anything because he has not many options. Be just in your dealing with those that work for you and with you and you will enjoy good health and length of days in your prosperity.
Shalom!
Pastor James Okon.
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