Employer’s Obligation to Pay Wages

The employer’s main (1) …………. is the obligation to pay wages. On the employer’s side, this obligation determines the whole (2) …………. relationship between employer and employee, as does the obligation to work on the employees (3) …………..

In the field of (4) ……………. law, the term “wage” is often reserved for workers in the sense of (5) ……….. workers (or wage-earners) whereas “salary” applies to white-collar workers and artists (or (6) ………… employees). (7) ………… or “pay” (sometimes also “emoluments”, “earnings” or “compensation”) are used as generic terms including all of these terms. The difference between all these (8) …………. is, however, (9) …………. irrelevant. Thus, for the sake of simplicity, they generally use the term “wage” in the following unless on the relatively few (10) ……….. where special cases for salaried workers require “salary” as the appropriate term.

If employee and employer are (11) ………… by a collective (12) ………….. - i.e. if they are members of the trade union and the employer’s association respectively, that have concluded a collective wage agreement (13) ……….. for the firm – or if, as a special exception, the collective wage agreement has been declared to be generally (14) …………. (most of these declarations (15) …………. to contract other than collective wage agreements), no further remuneration agreement is necessary.

Ex. 3. Read the following text. Fill in the blanks with the appropriate words from the box.