By Rabbi Dovid Bressman
According to American secular law, severance is not a legal obligation. What, then is the Jewish view on this matter?
The Torah states that when a Jewish slave concludes his term of servitude he is entitled to a severance: “You should give him many gifts from your flock, your threshing floor, or from your wine vat, (or) you should give him from whatever G-d, your G-d, has blessed you with.”[1] The Chinuch (Mitzvah 482) explains that the underlying idea behind this mitzvah is to implant in the employer good attributes and to show proper respect and kindness to his workers, (that is, to pay the worker a bonus in addition to the normal payment while the employee was working).[2]
The Chinuch concludes that although according to Talmudic law this mitzvah is only enforced during when the Jubilee year was in effect, nonetheless, a wise person should take a lesson from this and indeed pay a Jewish worker severance when he leaves, whether the worker worked for a long or short period of time.
Indeed, according to the seventeenth century Talmudist and Posek Rabbi Shabsai Kohen,[3] severance is considered a form of tzedakah. It seems that enforcing severance depends on the local custom.[4]
Even if the employer was not fully satisfied with the Jewish employee’s work, nonetheless, severance should still be given since it is a form of tzedakah.[5]
Exclusions from Receiving Severance
When an employee leaves his job prematurely by his own will, there is no mitzvah to give severance. This is derived from the law that a slave that flees or redeems himself is not granted severance.[6]
How much to pay
Severance should be adjusted based on the amount of time the employee worked for the employer.[7]
Certainly when the employee brought great results to the employer, then “according to the blessing one should compensate him”.[8]
[1] Devarim 15:14
[2] See also Chinuch (Mitzvah 450).
[3] Shach to Choshen Mishpat 86:3.
[4] See Minchas Yitzchak 6:167 who writes that in Israel, giving severance is the accepted custom and is therefore a complete obligation. In the diaspora (perhaps this is also the case depending on the community) severance should be given based on the verse, “And you shall do that which is straight and good” (Devarim 6:18).
[5] Likkutei Sichos vol. 19 p 153.
[6] Kiddushin 16b; Rambam Hilchos Avadim 3:14,15.
[7] Likkutei Sichos ibid. See also the Shitah Lo Noda Li’me to Kiddushin 17a explaining the opinion of Rebbi Meir.
[8] Kiddushin 17b.
