Was Jesus a Supporter of a Real Living Wage?

The upcoming National Justice & Peace Network day at Leeds Cathedral about UK poverty and the Real Living Wage reminded me of something I wrote during the pandemic in relation to the idea of aUniversal Basic Income – but I think the same idea applies to the Real Living Wage.

The Gospel parable of the labourers in the vineyard (Matt 20:1-16) is a relevant one. The vineyard owner goes early in the morning to the marketplace to hire day labourers – or, in our terms, zero contract hours workers. He offers them one denarius a day (which is what Roman soldiers were paid for a day – and the people listening would know that this was a generous amount to be paid). He does the same thing at various points in the day – including when there was only a short time available to work. He pays them all the same amount!

As someone brought up with the importance of trade unions this parable seemed a bit of a mystery – I got stuck on the seeming injustice of paying those who have been working since daybreak the same amount as those who have only been working an hour or two. How can it be right to pay these feckless people who have only done an hour or two’s work the same amount as those who started at the crack of dawn?

 I have come to realise that we have to see it through the eyes of the people of the time. Who are these people hanging around in the late afternoon and still available for work? Clearly, they are the people who no one wants to hire – those who are old, or with some form of infirmity that means they will not be able to work as productively as those hired early in the morning.
But why pay these latter the same amount?

I’ve seen various suggestions as to how much they were all paid- but most scholars seem agreed that the daily amount was enough to feed not just yourself but probably your dependents as well. In other words, the vineyard owner does not offer the minimum wage but a real living wage – or you could even term it a ‘family wage’ (or ‘household wage’).