Ford Motor Co. will tell Congress that it plans to return to a pretax profit or break even in 2011 when its CEO appears before two legislative committees this week.
Also, CEO Alan Mulally said he’ll work for $1 per year if the automaker has to take any government loan money.
More. This, of course, is part of a plan by American owned automakers to make a government bailout of their companies more palatable.
Supposing that this deal goes through, and Mulally takes the $1 a year salary. Is this unjust? A wage of $1 a year is much lower than what is typically taken to be a just wage among socially minded Catholics. And while there is no doubt that Mulally would be accepting the salary voluntarily, the fact that a wage contract is freely agreed to by all the parties involved is insufficient to guarantee its justice.
Yet somehow describing Mulally’s proposed $1 a year salary as “slave wages” doesn’t sound quite right (and not simple because slaves typically weren’t paid wages). After all, if Mulally takes the $1 an hour salary, neither he nor his family will presumably go hungry. In fact, it is doubtful whether his standard of living will change much at all, at least in the short run. Even assuming that he is the sole breadwinner of the family, and assuming (what is unlikely) that he has no wealth to draw upon to cover his expenses, a man of Mr. Mulally’s talents and future earning potential could no doubt easily secure a loan (hopefully at a non-usurious rate) to cover his expenses until Ford’s financial situation recovers enough to make it seemly to pay him again. Perhaps some a vacation will be delayed or various other luxuries will be eliminated from his budget, but when all is said and done he will continue to maintain an above average material condition even for an American.
And there’s the rub. Catholic Social Teaching on the Just Wage involves a statement not that wages must be above a certain set amount, but that “wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner.” If an employee has some means of support other than his employment, then an agreed upon wage may be quite low and yet remain just. And if this is so, then attempts to establish a just wage by legislating a set minimum wage for all workers are going to be problematic at best.
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