Employers & Employees

Colossians 4:1

“Masters, (Employers) treat your slaves (Employees) justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.”

God has not been silent when it comes to employers, they are to give prompt payment of wages, (Deuteronomy 24:15) they are to be considerate of their employees, (Job 31:13) and to refrain from threats, (Ephesians 6:9) and to be just in their dealing with the employees under their care, (Colossians 4:1) and it seems this applies to all employers not just Christians.

As a teenager I worked at a company that was in the food business, it’s owner was a Christian, they had many employees and the man I worked for, my manager, was also a card carrying Christian, a good man who taught us how to treat our customers with dignity and respect.  I believe this company followed all of the above requirements with one small exception, they or my manager, not sure of who made the decision to stop paying us our wages at 9:00 p.m., yet often worked us without pay till 10:30 or 11:00.

Our manager told us that cleaning the store was something that could not happen till the all customers had left the building, and by the way we always had customers come through the doors at 8:59 p.m. and shop till they got tired.  I can tell you as a person who was a good Baptist at that time, the produce gained weight when the customer was that inconsiderate. 

So we worked for free often for more than two hours, and it was clear to all that we were being cheated out of our wages.  That was wrong back in those days, and we the employees also began to do wrong things.  In that we complained to our manager that it was wrong to make us work without pay, he would give us the day old bread and some pastry items that were out of date to take home to our mothers.  It was not long till some bright kid, not me, came up with a new compensation plan, it was called add a pack of lucky cigarettes in your bag, just what we needed.  Never forget the wages of sin is death.

When an employer breaks any of the above requirements he opens the door for two things, and both are bad: First, his employees will come up with ways to make things right in their own eyes, never a good thing, and second God will not let a Christian business man do these things long term, it will cost him in many ways. 

Let me be very clear that the actions of others and myself were totally wrong, and by our actions we became thieves, not something to be proud of.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice