Do employers have a duty to continue paying wages in absence of work in return? Reasons to consider

• Autor: Aguinaga Meza, Ernesto Alonso
• Formato: artículo
• Fecha de Publicación: 2024
• Institución: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
• Repositorio: Revistas - Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
• Lenguaje: español
• OAI Identifier: oai:ojs.pkp.sfu.ca:article/30782
• Enlace del recurso: http://revistas.pucp.edu.pe/index.php/iusetveritas/article/view/30782
• Nivel de acceso: acceso abierto
• Materia: Remuneración; Trabajo a cambio; Licencia con goce de haber; Salario social; Deberes extralaborales; Justicia distributiva; Deberes positivos especiales; Situación de peligro; Derecho Laboral; Remuneration; Work in return; Paid leave; Social wage; Extra work duties; Distributive justice; Special positive duties; Hazardous situation; Labor Law

This paper, drawing from what occurred before and after the pandemic, is a substantiation endeavour aimed at determining the grounds that authorize the imposition, by law, of the corporate duty to continue paying wages, despite not receiving -or even expecting- work in return. To this end, first, it shows that the law in force already provides a powerful legal reason to justify legislative interventions in this sense: the constitutionalized social dimension of wages. Subsequently, in order to support the constitutional principle in question, it argues that there are sufficient moral reasons to implement distributive mechanisms of business income that even cover cases in which it is factually impossible to offer work in exchange. Finally, appealing to the notion of “special positive duty”, it asserts that the aforementioned constitutional provision is the materialization in the labour sphere of the ethical duty of every person to provide assistance to others who are in a hazardous situation or need, provided that doing so involves a trivial effort or sacrifice.