# When Did the Modern Employer/Employee Relationship Come About?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-modern-employer-employee-relationship-come-about/576245>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 28, 2011, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-modern-employer-employee-relationship-come-about/576245 "2011-03-28T12:35:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2011, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-modern-employer-employee-relationship-come-about/576245/1 "2011-03-28T12:35:20Z")

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Go back to Bible times, and the only “work” (in the sense of “having a job”) mentioned seems to involve either slavery (Ephesians 6:5), laborers hired just for the day on an as-needed basis (Job 7:1), and merchants (who may or may not have employed apprentices from time to time).

What I would like to know is, is there a point in history where one can say, with some degree of certainty, that the modern practice of employing a person on a paid basis, with the understanding that he/she may continue to return to work for you until either party says otherwise, came about?

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**Author:** ![Arkcon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Arkcon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arkcon)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2011, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-modern-employer-employee-relationship-come-about/576245/2 "2011-03-28T12:56:09Z")

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What you seem to be describing is factory work. Where separate, possible repetitive tasks, performed by a number of semi-skilled people, all working towards a common goal – to build a plow, produce earthenware, or weapons, for example. Note that “factory” is a very old word, that predates the industrial revolution. Craftsmen may even have used the concept back in pre-Biblical times.

> **[Factory | History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory#History)**
>
> Max Weber considered production during ancient and medieval times as never warranting classification as factories, with methods of production and the contemporary economic situation incomparable to modern or even pre-modern developments of industry. In ancient times, the earliest production limited to the household, developed into a separate endeavor independent to the place of inhabitation with production at that time only beginning to be characteristic of industry, termed as "unfree shop indust...

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**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2011, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-modern-employer-employee-relationship-come-about/576245/3 "2011-03-28T13:15:44Z")

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I didn’t get factory work from the OP.  
I just figured (s)he was talking about salaried work, which goes back a [loong](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salary#First_paid_salary) way.

> [@wiki](#):
>
> …  
> From this, most infer that the first salary would have been paid in a village or city during the Neolithic Revolution, sometime between 10,000 BCE and 6000 BCE.  
> A cuneiform inscribed clay tablet dated about BCE 3100 provides a record of the daily beer rations for workers in Mesopotamia.  
> …  
> By the time of the Hebrew Book of Ezra (550 to 450 BCE), salt from a person was synonymous with drawing sustenance, taking pay, or being in that person’s service.