If employees expected employers to pay them two weeks in advance of their work, what would the reaction of many employers probably be? Shock, fury, and dismissal, in all likelihood. This would be valid on its own—the work has not been done yet, and so while there is nothing wrong with paying someone in advance, employees would not be entitled to such treatment. It could not be just, if morality exists, for people to deserve the reward for that which they have not yet done. They have not done it. In the same way, it would be unjust to kill someone for a capital sin they will commit, unless they are in the act of attempting it right then and there, because they have not actually done it.
Moreover, it is not just that they have not yet done anything to earn the money (or death in the analogous example). Because it has not been done, it might not wind up being done at all. This is not because workers have some inherent tendency to not follow through in such a scenario. It is because the future is unknowable, except that logical necessities will remain true because they cannot be any other way. Not even one's own actions in the future, as opposed to those of others which are even further removed from verifiability because one can at least know one's own intentions, are guaranteed, for anything from an unexpected change of heart to hypothetical mind control could interfere with the planned labor.
What, however, of employees being made to wait up to a customary two weeks—or a month in some cases—before they received payment for work they have already done? This is the norm in my country. This, too, has logical problems in that if such a thing as morality exists, and if workers deserve compensation for their work, then once the work is done, there is no basis for intentionally, artificially prolonged delays in the payment process. People work and have to wait perhaps 14 days or more to receive their promised reward, though they might be in desperate need, and not due to asinine resource squandering, of the money owed to them that same day.
It is in actuality a Biblical human right for workers to be paid the same day as their labor, before the sun sets if their work ends prior to this point in the day (Leviticus 19:13, Deuteronomy 24:14-15; see also Malachi 3:5 and James 5:4). Leviticus makes no exceptions in its proclamation; Deuteronomy, though, calls special attention to how the poor and needy depend on being given what they are already entitled to before sunset, as well as to how this is the human right of the native-born and foreigner. I imagine this command of Yahweh would be ignored or even attacked by some men and women who call themselves Christian businesspersons, but that does not change its status in genuine Christian philosophy.
There is a cultural double standard, condemned by the Bible and contrary to reason as all double standards are, that subjects employees unnecessarily to the whims of employers who are often stupid, greedy, and deceptive. Work must be done for anyone to logically or Biblically deserve wages: the Bible's teachings about how laborers must be paid for their work before sunset require that they actually worked to be given this compensation! All the same, work that has been done deserves quick payment by Biblical standards and certainly does not warrant a delay of up to 14 days to be the norm either way. Employees do not deserve regular payment two weeks in advance of work and closely related to this is the fact that it is exploitative to make them wait so long after their task or shift is complete.
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