Is this Morally Wrong?

[david40]

Hi all,

I have 2 cases which I need your objective moral opinion in light of Catholic Social Justice.

Here are the 2 cases…

Case #1: Firing the employee
During the interview I found out that she still was working for other company but she intended to quit due to her unsatisfaction with her employer’s work system.
After I accepted her, she immediately quit from her old job. I hired her and gave her the 3-month probation period. This 3-month probationary period allows me to determine if the employee is suited for the job or not before entering into the one year contract. During the 3-month probation period, she showed some incompetencies which fell below my company’s standard of performance. Her problems were that she made so many mistakes consistently due to her carelessness and her working speed was way too slow compared with her peers. I warned her that her carelessness and her working speed were not acceptable and my message was that she needed to make some changes in order to stay working in my company. After 2 weeks, I observed that she still hasn’t made any changes and finally one day, still during the probation period, when she came to work in the morning, I told her that she’s fired that morning and I paid her pro-rated salary.
I was convinced that she had no hope of changing her working performance within the time frame of the probationary period.
In light of Catholic Social Justice teaching, was my action morally wrong?

Case #2: Meal allowances
My wife used to give my living-in housemaid daily meal allowances of $7. From those meal allowances, the housemaid had more than enough to buy her groceries and freely cook her food in my kitchen. Sometimes she used the meal allowances to buy something else other than her groceries which displeased us. Anyway, she cooked every day using our electric stove and this costed our electricity bill to go higher sifnificantly. And my wife doesn’t like this. So, she stopped giving her daily meal allowances and instead she bought her groceries and still let the housemaid cook in my kitchen. Why she did this? She knows where to buy cheaper groceries and she goes there to buy the groceries in bulk quantity and this saves her $2 of the supposed daily meal allowances. And she used this $2 savings to pay for the increased electricity bill due to housemaid’s daily cooking. So, instead of spending $210 monthly for her meal allowances, now she is only spending $150. Whether the maid knows or not that my wife saved $60 monthly by buying her groceries herself and not giving the maid the savings that my wife gets, the goal of providing enough food for the housemaid is achieved.
The monthly total cost for housemaid’s food and cooking needs
When the maid bought her own groceries: $270
After my wife buys her groceries herself: $210 (She pockets the difference)
I know that she’s very smart in saving the money but in light of Catholic Social Justice teaching, is my wife’s action morally wrong?

Thanks for reading and thanks for your objective moral opinions.

 

[kimmielittle]

Hiyas

IMHO: Case number 1 and 2 are justifiable. We are called to be good stewards.

I hope this helps.

 

[EasterJoy]

Case #2: Meal allowances
My wife used to give my living-in housemaid daily meal allowances of $7. From those meal allowances, the housemaid had more than enough to buy her groceries and freely cook her food in my kitchen. Sometimes she used the meal allowances to buy something else other than her groceries which displeased us. Anyway, she cooked every day using our electric stove and this costed our electricity bill to go higher sifnificantly. And my wife doesn’t like this. So, she stopped giving her daily meal allowances and instead she bought her groceries and still let the housemaid cook in my kitchen. Why she did this? She knows where to buy cheaper groceries and she goes there to buy the groceries in bulk quantity and this saves her $2 of the supposed daily meal allowances. And she used this $2 savings to pay for the increased electricity bill due to housemaid’s daily cooking. So, instead of spending $210 monthly for her meal allowances, now she is only spending $150. Whether the maid knows or not that my wife saved $60 monthly by buying her groceries herself and not giving the maid the savings that my wife gets, the goal of providing enough food for the housemaid is achieved.
The monthly total cost for housemaid’s food and cooking needs
When the maid bought her own groceries: $270
After my wife buys her groceries herself: $210 (She pockets the difference)
I know that she’s very smart in saving the money but in light of Catholic Social Justice teaching, is my wife’s action morally wrong?

Thanks for reading and thanks for your objective moral opinions.

What was the agreement: that a meal allowance would be provided or that meals would be provided? Generally speaking, when meal allowances are given in cash, the cash belongs to the worker. If you don’t require her to account for it, she can use it as she likes. She can skip lunch every day and pocket the whole thing, and it isn’t any of your business.

She lives in your house, so she can use your kitchen, as long as she doesn’t use the electricity? It doesn’t cost $2 to run an oven for an hour, and I kind of doubt it takes her that much to cook lunch on a stove, but it is unrealistic to provide a kitchen but then tell her not to use the appliances. If you tell her the meal allowance includes use of your kitchen, nobody in the world is going to think that electricity is not included, particularly not if she is a live-in employee. I don’t mean she should expect to be able to set up a tomato farm in your basement, but she should be able to use the furnished appliances and outlets. (Did you ask her to change her hairstyle, too, or did your wife still not figure out how much electricity hair driers suck up? Are daily showers provided? Timed or not timed? Were crockpots specifically forbidden in her contract?)

I will wager that the maid knows why your wife started buying the groceries for her meals. If I was given a meal allowance when I started that was later changed to a provision of groceries of my employer’s choice, I would look at it as a cut in pay. I bet that she does, too. I don’t know about her, but I’d find it a bit insulting, too…and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference if that’s all you spent on your own meals, either. You’re allowed to be as cheap with your own food as you like. The only exception would be if she were allowed to eat all she liked at meals shared with you.

If I were her, I’d be looking for other employment, because cheap employers usually don’t change. When they’re generous, they want applause, and yet they’re always looking greedily over your shoulder for every penny you could be costing them. After there’s an understanding about the electricity used at lunch, there will be a talk about wastefully using too much toilet cleaner, and after that, who knows what. And it’s not about saving the earth, because there’s never any incentive for you to save. All the rules make life more difficult for you, but all the savings go to them. This is not to say that you’re like that. It is to say that this is the way a wise employee would probably bet. If you’ve never been in that position as an employee, read “Nickel and Dimed”, and you’ll see what I mean. If you have been, just think back!

The job market is tough, yes, but reliable live-in help is very difficult to find, and life is too short.

 

[kimmielittle]

What was the agreement: that a meal allowance would be provided or that meals would be provided? Generally speaking, when meal allowances are given in cash, the cash belongs to the worker. If you don’t require her to account for it, she can use it as she likes. She can skip lunch every day and pocket the whole thing, and it isn’t any of your business.

She lives in your house, so she can use your kitchen, as long as she doesn’t use the electricity? It doesn’t cost $2 to run an oven for an hour, and I kind of doubt it takes her that much to cook lunch on a stove, but it is unrealistic to provide a kitchen but then tell her not to use the appliances. If you tell her the meal allowance includes use of your kitchen, nobody in the world is going to think that electricity is not included, particularly not if she is a live-in employee. I don’t mean she should expect to be able to set up a tomato farm in your basement, but she should be able to use the furnished appliances and outlets. (Did you ask her to change her hairstyle, too, or did your wife still not figure out how much electricity hair driers suck up? Are daily showers provided? Timed or not timed? Were crockpots specifically forbidden in her contract?)

I will wager that the maid knows why your wife started buying the groceries for her meals. If I was given a meal allowance when I started that was later changed to a provision of groceries of my employer’s choice, I would look at it as a cut in pay. I bet that she does, too. I don’t know about her, but I’d find it a bit insulting, too…and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference if that’s all you spent on your own meals, either. You’re allowed to be as cheap with your own food as you like. The only exception would be if she were allowed to eat all she liked at meals shared with you.

If I were her, I’d be looking for other employment, because cheap employers usually don’t change. When they’re generous, they want applause, and yet they’re always looking greedily over your shoulder for every penny you could be costing them. After there’s an understanding about the electricity used at lunch, there will be a talk about wastefully using too much toilet cleaner, and after that, who knows what. And it’s not about saving the earth, because there’s never any incentive for you to save. All the rules make life more difficult for you, but all the savings go to them. This is not to say that you’re like that. It is to say that this is the way a wise employee would probably bet. If you’ve never been in that position as an employee, read “Nickel and Dimed”, and you’ll see what I mean. If you have been, just think back!

The job market is tough, yes, but reliable live-in help is very difficult to find, and life is too short.

Ahhhhh great points:thumbsup:

 

[david40]

EasterJoy: thanks for your great opinions. I really appreciate the time you spent writing your great opinion. I will let my wife read this thread.

As to other posters, I am still looking forward to reading your opinions. Thanks again EasterJoy!

 

[1ke]

Terminating an employee who cannot do the job is not unjust.

As for the maid situation:

If you make enough money to have a live-in maid then you are being unjust and just plain cheap to take away her meal allowance and freedom to buy whatever she wants for her meals and force her to eat what YOU buy at the grocery so you can save $2. She cannot possibly use that much electricity. And she is a live-in. What else is she supposed to do?

I think you are being very cheap. Honestly, most people cannot afford maids, let alone full time ones. And your wife is being stingy over $2???

I don’t know where you are, maybe in another country other than the US? If so, the live in maid is probably under paid, over worked, and at your mercy. Wow, what is $2 a day to you compared to her?

 

[kage_ar]

You can afford a maid and whine about a few cents in electricity?

 

[Catholic90]

You can afford a maid and whine about a few cents in electricity?

I agree with the other poster who said if you give her an allowance, she is not obligated to buy food with it. If she wants to skip lunch and spend that money on whatever she wants, that is her prerogative!

If I were that maid working for you, and you suddenly started buying what YOU thought I should eat, I would be looking for a new job. How presumptuous of you to think you know better than I do what I should like for lunch! You have given her a pay cut.

 

[puzzleannie]

in case # 1 if you were following company policy and properly informed the employee and fired her according to state procedure, you would be morally wrong if you kept an incompetent employee on, because you would be shirking your responsibility as a manager

case #2 is incomprehensible. If you can afford a maid, and she works in your home over the normal time for meals, simply provide food for her, unless you make arrangements for her to leave the premises to eat out. Whatever you agreed when you hired her is what you should stick to. If you need to change the arrangement, negotiate with her. how much you spend on meals you provide is your business. I cannot for the life of me understand how cooking one meal a day is adding significantly to your electric cost. I recommend you call the electric company and find out how their billing works.

If your maid lives in you should have a negotiated contract that specifies meal arrangements, time off, uniforms, and all aspects of the working conditions. $7 a day? not much in my book. If she is the maid and cooks for you, why does she not simply eat whatever the family is eating. If you want to give her an allowance to buy other food she prefers, do so, but don’t change the rules arbitrarily without some mutual agreement.

both of these are prudential issues not moral issues, although expecting a live in maid to live on $7/day for food comes close

 

[royal_archer]

Hi all,

I have 2 cases which I need your objective moral opinion in light of Catholic Social Justice.

Here are the 2 cases…

Case #1: Firing the employee
During the interview I found out that she still was working for other company but she intended to quit due to her unsatisfaction with her employer’s work system.
After I accepted her, she immediately quit from her old job. I hired her and gave her the 3-month probation period. This 3-month probationary period allows me to determine if the employee is suited for the job or not before entering into the one year contract. During the 3-month probation period, she showed some incompetencies which fell below my company’s standard of performance. Her problems were that she made so many mistakes consistently due to her carelessness and her working speed was way too slow compared with her peers. I warned her that her carelessness and her working speed were not acceptable and my message was that she needed to make some changes in order to stay working in my company. After 2 weeks, I observed that she still hasn’t made any changes and finally one day, still during the probation period, when she came to work in the morning, I told her that she’s fired that morning and I paid her pro-rated salary.
I was convinced that she had no hope of changing her working performance within the time frame of the probationary period.
In light of Catholic Social Justice teaching, was my action morally wrong?
…
Thanks for reading and thanks for your objective moral opinions.

Been there and done that and know how nerve wrecking it can be. This is one of the aspects I like about no longer being in management

If you gave her opportunity to change her performance and documented it you are probably good legaly. You may want to check your local laws with compensation because if someone comes in you may be required to pay for some minimum hours for the day.

You may also want to consider whether you properly advertised the job. Is there any chance you may have unintentionally mislead her about how hard the job would be or were in any way negligent in offering the job to an employee that you should have known was not qualified? Not that that would give you a legal obligation but from a personal moral point of view I woudl feel responsible for hiring someone into a possition that they could not do and then letting them go. I also know the guilt that would come in knowing that someone quit a stable job to come to work for me and then I took that job away from them.

To ease your concious, have you made an effort to get that person a job they were qualified for? I now there are some legal concerns with vouching for a person you are saying is not qualified but sometimes using the buisness network you can informally putll strings to get the person taken care of. (assuming it was not because the person had an attitude problem.

 

[royal_archer]

Hi all,

I have 2 cases which I need your objective moral opinion in light of Catholic Social Justice.

Here are the 2 cases…
Case #2: Meal allowances
My wife used to give my living-in housemaid daily meal allowances of $7. From those meal allowances, the housemaid had more than enough to buy her groceries and freely cook her food in my kitchen. Sometimes she used the meal allowances to buy something else other than her groceries which displeased us. Anyway, she cooked every day using our electric stove and this costed our electricity bill to go higher sifnificantly. And my wife doesn’t like this. So, she stopped giving her daily meal allowances and instead she bought her groceries and still let the housemaid cook in my kitchen. Why she did this? She knows where to buy cheaper groceries and she goes there to buy the groceries in bulk quantity and this saves her $2 of the supposed daily meal allowances. And she used this $2 savings to pay for the increased electricity bill due to housemaid’s daily cooking. So, instead of spending $210 monthly for her meal allowances, now she is only spending $150. Whether the maid knows or not that my wife saved $60 monthly by buying her groceries herself and not giving the maid the savings that my wife gets, the goal of providing enough food for the housemaid is achieved.
The monthly total cost for housemaid’s food and cooking needs
When the maid bought her own groceries: $270
After my wife buys her groceries herself: $210 (She pockets the difference)
I know that she’s very smart in saving the money but in light of Catholic Social Justice teaching, is my wife’s action morally wrong?

Thanks for reading and thanks for your objective moral opinions.

I think I have a different perspective than some of the other posters here because We are at a point where we are living comfortably but no rich I thought about the option of hiring a live in maid thinking that the room and board would make up for the meagerness of the pay that I could offer and would be a great opportunity for someone who would otherwise be homeless or on welfare. I can understand getting to the point where you may be able to offersomeone a job but still being strapped for cash. Is this allowance just for lunch or for all meals? Does she share dinner with you? Why isn’t your maid participating in the shopping?

As for the electricity, probably not enough to have a maid disgruntled over it.

 

[david40]

Thanks all for all the opinions. I enjoy reading them!

Some stats:

I am a business owner of an online company and I live in Kualalumpur, the capital of Malaysia (close to Singapore & Indonesia). I am not rich by any local standard. Maybe I am just a middle class income earner.

The maid is 20 years old and she lives in my house 24/7 and 7 days a week. She does not have any full day off so she keeps working even on Sunday. I try to give her a Sunday off but I always get heavy resistance from my wife due to the fact that many household chores that still need to be done even on Sunday. And besides, it’s the social norms here that the housemaid works 7 days/week without any day off. So, it will be very weird if the maid gets a Sunday Off and since she’s a muslim, she’s not obligated to observe the Lord’s day, right? Or this is morally wrong to force my non-Christian housemaid to work on Sunday?

She is on an 11-month work contract and she works daily (7 days/week) from 6 AM until 10 PM with about 5 hours breaks time (collectively) within those hours. By collectively, I mean, she takes 30 minutes to 1 hour rest here and there, between works or as the circumstances allow (non-scheduled rest time). We provide room for her to sleep. About the case with the meal allowances, please read again my initial post up there.

She does the laundry, sweeps & mops the floor, cleans the restroom and bathroom, mows my lawn and maintains the garden, washes dishes, cleans everything that needs to be cleaned and takes care of my 2 toddlers. The work itself, we think it’s not that hard. She gets plenty of rest times in between but she has to attend to us until 10PM even if there is no more work left after dinner.

The housemaid’s monthly salary is $400 and when we hired her we told her that we would provide for her food. She eats separately from us because she has her own small multi-function table to eat her meals.

So on the first day of work, my wife gave her $7 daily meal allowances because we wanted her to use that money to buy her own food. And this went on for about 1 month until we found out the unexpected increase in our electricity bill due to her using our electric stove to cook her meals. This is where the problem comes with the electricity bill because of her using our kitchen electric stove to cook 1 - 2 times a day for her breakfast, lunch, and dinner. When she still got the $7 daily meal allowances, many times the maid likes to buy something else other than the groceries she’s supposed to buy. Therefore, sometimes the maid didn’t get enough food to eat because sometimes she put higher priority on buying something else other than her groceries. And my wife doesn’t like this and she fixed this problem…

So now, my wife is buying the groceries for the maid ($5/day) according to my wife’s taste with the result of saving $2/day which she doesn’t pass on to the maid, instead, she uses that $2/day saving for paying the increased electricity bill due the maid’s usage of kitchen electric stove.

Here is the summary:
The monthly total cost for housemaid’s food and cooking needs
When the maid bought her own groceries: $270
After my wife buys her groceries herself: $210 (She pockets the monthly $60 difference)

And my question… in light of Catholic Social Justice teaching, is my wife’s action morally wrong?
She thinks it is not wrong morally and in fact, it’s justified because now the maid has better food to eat daily.
However, with better food, the maid doesn’t have any extra money left from daily meal allowances that she could use to buy anything else as she used to be able to.
My wife argues that since the maid is guaranteed to get enough better food to eat daily, she is not morally wrong from pocketing the $2/daily saving from buying the groceries herself (at her taste/wishes).

What a good catholic person should do in this situation?
I want to do the right thing and I will let my wife read this thread tomorrow.
Please help me with your opinions and suggestions. Thanks again for reading!

 

[EasterJoy]

The maid is 20 years old and she lives in my house 24/7 and 7 days a week. She does not have any full day off so she keeps working even on Sunday. I try to give her a Sunday off but I always get heavy resistance from my wife due to the fact that many household chores that still need to be done even on Sunday. And besides, it’s the social norms here that the housemaid works 7 days/week without any day off. So, it will be very weird if the maid gets a Sunday Off and since she’s a muslim, she’s not obligated to observe the Lord’s day, right? Or this is morally wrong to force my non-Christian housemaid to work on Sunday?

She is on an 11-month work contract and she works daily (7 days/week) from 6 AM until 10 PM with about 5 hours breaks time (collectively) within those hours. By collectively, I mean, she takes 30 minutes to 1 hour rest here and there, between works or as the circumstances allow (non-scheduled rest time). We provide room for her to sleep. About the case with the meal allowances, please read again my initial post up there.

She does the laundry, sweeps & mops the floor, cleans the restroom and bathroom, mows my lawn and maintains the garden, washes dishes, cleans everything that needs to be cleaned and takes care of my 2 toddlers. The work itself, we think it’s not that hard. She gets plenty of rest times in between but she has to attend to us until 10PM even if there is no more work left after dinner…

… in light of Catholic Social Justice teaching, is my wife’s action morally wrong?
She thinks it is not wrong morally and in fact, it’s justified because now the maid has better food to eat daily.
However, with better food, the maid doesn’t have any extra money left from daily meal allowances that she could use to buy anything else as she used to be able to.
My wife argues that since the maid is guaranteed to get enough better food to eat daily, she is not morally wrong from pocketing the $2/daily saving from buying the groceries herself (at her taste/wishes).

What a good catholic person should do in this situation?
I want to do the right thing and I will let my wife read this thread tomorrow.
Please help me with your opinions and suggestions. Thanks again for reading!

Since you aren’t in the US, I can’t speak to her pay, because the cost of living and relative prices of different commodities differs so much from one place to another (food being expensive in one place, electricity in another, labor in another) but it sounds like she does what a wife and mother normally does for her family, but without the love and appreciation. If you think about it that way, the thing she deserves most is consideration and respect, not just money. You can’t pay money alone for what she does. This is always true of honest labor, of course, but doubly so when the labor is the care of your children or parents.

Also, consider that it is not good for children to be taken care of by an adult that gets no interactions with other adults, insufficient time away from the children, no adult conversation, and little respect from the child’s parents. She needs to be treated as if what she does is extremely valuable to you, and that doing it well earns your affection. If not, the children will suffer, as they will just become a job, as if they were in a cold institution.

OK…I will give your wife a bit of a break. Buying a twenty-year-old food because she was getting a meal allowance but starving herself on it, that’s a little different. That’s not being upset about what she’s buying, but unhappy that she’s not achieving what the allowance was meant for. Very different. Still, if it was about keeping her healthy instead of saving yourselves money, then you would give her the money from what you had originally agreed to give her that is leftover after you paid for her food. As for electricity, if you can meter her room and split whatever part of her electricity allowance she doesn’t use, that gives her part of the reward if she acts in a frugal way. There’s nothing wrong with her saving you money. It is when you expect her to bend over backwards to save you money, but you reward yourself only with her extra efforts. Don’t muzzle the ox on the threshing floor, after all.

You might want to look at Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church: Chapter Six by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=7216)
which states in part: “Rest from work is a right. As God “rested on the seventh day from all the work which he had done” (Gen 2:2), so too men and women, created in his image, are to enjoy sufficient rest and free time that will allow them to tend to their family, cultural, social and religious life.”

As a Catholic with a Muslim maid, it in would appear that you in luck. The Muslim day of rest, Jumma, is also the Catholic day of penance. Isn’t that handy? You could give your maid a rest on Jumma, allowing her to do the minimum you need her to do, and do without the rest of her daily duties as your own Friday penance, which these days can be any sort of sacrifice that benefits others, and not just abstaining from meat and things like that. Making a sacrifice so she could observe her own holy day would be a very good habitual Friday penance.

 

[puzzleannie]

Thanks all for all the opinions. I enjoy reading them!

Some stats:

I am a business owner of an online company and I live in Kualalumpur, the capital of Malaysia (close to Singapore & Indonesia). I am not rich by any local standard. Maybe I am just a middle class income earner.

The maid is 20 years old and she lives in my house 24/7 and 7 days a week. She does not have any full day off so she keeps working even on Sunday. I try to give her a Sunday off but I always get heavy resistance from my wife due to the fact that many household chores that still need to be done even on Sunday. !

in the US this would be considered slavery, or at least serfdom. the principals of Catholic Social Justice call for paying a living wage and reasonable working conditions. You and your wife need to have a talk. What is your wife doing all this time? Is she disabled so she cannot do her own housework? Why are you not helping with housework? If you needed workers in your business 24/7 you would hire 3 workers, one for each shift. If your wife thinks she needs help Sunday–a day of rest when no unneccesary work should be done in any case–hire someone else.

the way you phrase your problem however sounds more like a dispute between you and your wife, and that is where you will find your solution. You have to discuss this as you do all other such decisions. In any case not a very good way to evangelize Muslims by showing them examples of Christians exploiting employees. If you don’t think that workload is hard, try doing it by yourself for a week.

 

[Catholic90]

The maid is 20 years old and she lives in my house 24/7 and 7 days a week. She does not have any full day off so she keeps working even on Sunday. I try to give her a Sunday off but I always get heavy resistance from my wife due to the fact that many household chores that still need to be done even on Sunday.

She is on an 11-month work contract and she works daily (7 days/week) from 6 AM until 10 PM with about 5 hours breaks time (collectively) within those hours. By collectively, I mean, she takes 30 minutes to 1 hour rest here and there, between works or as the circumstances allow (non-scheduled rest time). We provide room for her to sleep. About the case with the meal allowances, please read again my initial post up there.

She does the laundry, sweeps & mops the floor, cleans the restroom and bathroom, mows my lawn and maintains the garden, washes dishes, cleans everything that needs to be cleaned and takes care of my 2 toddlers. The work itself, we think it’s not that hard. She gets plenty of rest times in between but she has to attend to us until 10PM even if there is no more work left after dinner.

And your wife does WHAT while the maid is cleaning up after you guys AND watching your children?? Eating bon-bons and grumbling that the maid is using a few cents more electricity?!?

You have 2 toddlers, and you have the gall to say “the work itself, we think it’s not that hard.” Obviously, you have never spent large chunks of time with toddlers! As any mother can tell you, toddlers are WORK! They are exhausting at times! So don’t kid yourself that the work is not that hard.

Your wife does not seem to be setting a good example for your children.

 

[EasterJoy]

And your wife does WHAT while the maid is cleaning up after you guys AND watching your children?? Eating bon-bons and grumbling that the maid is using a few cents more electricity?!?

You have 2 toddlers, and you have the gall to say “the work itself, we think it’s not that hard.” Obviously, you have never spent large chunks of time with toddlers! As any mother can tell you, toddlers are WORK! They are exhausting at times! So don’t kid yourself that the work is not that hard.

Your wife does not seem to be setting a good example for your children.

Yes, it is easy to understand how tiring that kind of work is, especially if the children are treated as people, and not pets.

Nevertheless, his wife could be a physician. She could be a philanthropist. She could be mayor. She might just choose to have a job outside the home. Since she does her own shopping, though, it can be assumed she does not think work is beneath her.

He didn’t ask whether his wife had a moral obligation to do work, in charity we ought to assume that she does some. Catholic women are not morally bound to personally watch their own toddlers, any more than Catholic men are. It really isn’t any of our business. We should probably stick to the matter of how to treat their housemaid and nanny fairly. The wife could be working 4 hours a week or 90, and it wouldn’t change that.

 

[St_Francis]

Hi all,

I have 2 cases which I need your objective moral opinion in light of Catholic Social Justice.

Here are the 2 cases…

Case #1: Firing the employee
During the interview I found out that she still was working for other company but she intended to quit due to her unsatisfaction with her employer’s work system.
After I accepted her, she immediately quit from her old job. I hired her and gave her the 3-month probation period. This 3-month probationary period allows me to determine if the employee is suited for the job or not before entering into the one year contract. During the 3-month probation period, she showed some incompetencies which fell below my company’s standard of performance. Her problems were that she made so many mistakes consistently due to her carelessness and her working speed was way too slow compared with her peers. I warned her that her carelessness and her working speed were not acceptable and my message was that she needed to make some changes in order to stay working in my company. After 2 weeks, I observed that she still hasn’t made any changes and finally one day, still during the probation period, when she came to work in the morning, I told her that she’s fired that morning and I paid her pro-rated salary.
I was convinced that she had no hope of changing her working performance within the time frame of the probationary period.
In light of Catholic Social Justice teaching, was my action morally wrong?

I would say that this is an indication that you need to set up some sort of test to see if people have the basic skills and aptitude before hiring them. That would probably be more fair and also more efficient. Plus the issue of her carelessness combined with slowness might have been caused by poor training or explanation of priorities (not saying it is, but could be).

Case #2: Meal allowances
My wife used to give my living-in housemaid daily meal allowances of $7. From those meal allowances, the housemaid had more than enough to buy her groceries and freely cook her food in my kitchen. Sometimes she used the meal allowances to buy something else other than her groceries which displeased us. Anyway, she cooked every day using our electric stove and this costed our electricity bill to go higher sifnificantly. And my wife doesn’t like this. So, she stopped giving her daily meal allowances and instead she bought her groceries and still let the housemaid cook in my kitchen. Why she did this? She knows where to buy cheaper groceries and she goes there to buy the groceries in bulk quantity and this saves her $2 of the supposed daily meal allowances. And she used this $2 savings to pay for the increased electricity bill due to housemaid’s daily cooking. So, instead of spending $210 monthly for her meal allowances, now she is only spending $150. Whether the maid knows or not that my wife saved $60 monthly by buying her groceries herself and not giving the maid the savings that my wife gets, the goal of providing enough food for the housemaid is achieved.
The monthly total cost for housemaid’s food and cooking needs
When the maid bought her own groceries: $270
After my wife buys her groceries herself: $210 (She pockets the difference)
I know that she’s very smart in saving the money but in light of Catholic Social Justice teaching, is my wife’s action morally wrong?

Thanks for reading and thanks for your objective moral opinions.

If the deal was $400/month and room and board, then changing the nature of the board would not be immoral.

 

[kage_ar]

You might want to think about finding someone to be the full time caregiver of your children who will teach them Catholic beliefs.

 

[eucharisteo]

The first worker could not perform the work, you fired her, no issue. However if you hired her without checking to see if she could handle the work, I believe you have an issue.

The second issue with the maid just infuriates me. Having a maid in your culture is of no consequence. However not giving her time off is just not justified. We have 3 children and both of us work. We pay daycare and after school care. We treat those people, one a Muslim, very well and even give them a bonus. My blood is boiling over the way your spoiled wife has chosen to exploit this young woman. She has an opportunity to teach her through Christian charity and has chosen to exploit rather than be charitable. No wonder people from other faiths think so poorly of Catholics. With this kind of unjustifiable treatment I want to scream at the top of my lungs. Even if your wife was disabled you should give the woman a day off period.

 

[royal_archer]

The first worker could not perform the work, you fired her, no issue. However if you hired her without checking to see if she could handle the work, I believe you have an issue.

The second issue with the maid just infuriates me. Having a maid in your culture is of no consequence. However not giving her time off is just not justified. We have 3 children and both of us work. We pay daycare and after school care. We treat those people, one a Muslim, very well and even give them a bonus. My blood is boiling over the way your spoiled wife has chosen to exploit this young woman. She has an opportunity to teach her through Christian charity and has chosen to exploit rather than be charitable. No wonder people from other faiths think so poorly of Catholics. With this kind of unjustifiable treatment I want to scream at the top of my lungs. Even if your wife was disabled you should give the woman a day off period.

Part of being a christian is to be charitable to those who have not come to the same level of understanding that we have. I hope the original poster was attempting to be more charitable than what in normal in there culture. Just because it is not up to American levels of charity, is not reason in itself to attack someone. We must also consider that if the wife is this demanding with the maid situation, the problem may extend to other areas.