“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around, and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received a denarius. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard
Is it ‘right’ to pay the workers who slogged from morning the same as those who joined in for an hour in the evening (assuming their output is proportional to hours)? That depends, obviously, on what one means by right.
What you have going against it is that such equal pay for unequal work violates the cherished idea of “Equal pay for equal work”. If I slog the whole day, and see someone stroll in at the eleventh hour and reap the same reward, it is difficult to avoid hard feelings.
What you have going for it is the idea of a contract, that someone voluntarily agreed to work for a certain sum. One denarius for a day’s labour seemed good enough to sign up for in the morning, and what has changed since then? What someone else gets for their labour is nothing to do with what I agreed to, so why renege on my agreement, that too for reasons that have nothing to do with my contract?
And then there is freedom, the freedom of the landowner to do what he wishes with his money – Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Perhaps he could have given the other workers much less and gotten away with it, yet who but he is to decide what he is to do with his wealth?
In reality, however, the landowner would probably need to hire the labourers again after that day, and there he runs into difficulties. A denarius apiece might work when the details of payment are unknown to workers beforehand, but it’s another matter once the cat is out of the bag. It almost certainly affects your behaviour when you know you’ll be paid one denarius whether you work an hour or a dozen hours. And so that landowner will have difficulty getting anyone to sign up from morning ever again.
If you take this into account, it seems quite a silly way to run a setup, notwithstanding how noble it sounds to proclaim the last as the first. And so perhaps what is right is instead what is ‘just’, where by justice I mean treating people in accordance with their deserts. The one who puts in more gets more, and anyone who puts in something gets something.
At least, it seems to make more sense that way, particularly in the context of payment for work. But what of a different context? Consider the context of salvation, howsoever you define it, which is after all relevant, given the source of the parable. Is salvation or heaven reserved only for the earliest workers? Or there, are we lenient, and allow in those who turn towards the light only much later? The stringency with which we denied the claims of the last worker disappears, not least because of self-interest.
The reason for the difference I think is that one example is binary, and the other is countable, a spectrum. You either achieve salvation or go to heaven, or you don’t, there’s no scenario in between. Whereas, you can be paid an amount, or a little more or less, or much more or less, with a whole spectrum of options. When it’s not binary, and you can finetune what each one gets, it’s much easier to be selective and tailor how each person is to be treated. I can give the first workers ten denarius, the next batch, eight, the next five, and the last two, and come away feeling I’ve treated everyone fairly.
But if I have only one note to give each person, it’s all or nothing, and there it’s much harder. Such is the example of salvation, I presume, unless there are grades in heaven too. And so, here the problem I need to solve is not how to treat everyone fairly as much as it is whether it is too harsh to give a man nothing at all in return for the something he has done, be it ever so small. The one who has left no stone unturned might be anguished to be treated the same as one who has barely scratched the surface, but do I prefer that to turning away empty-handed this one, who has after all scratched the surface, even if barely?
These are two different categories of problems then. You can resolve both identically if you are wedded to a principle – say liberty, my freedom to do as I want with my money, or equality (of outcome), or another. Or you can resolve each independently, perhaps differently if you so wish. But to claim that how you resolve one necessarily has implications for the other, that a solution to one indicates the solution to the other, isn’t true.