From obscuring the range of pay by hiding behind what is on its own the vague phrase "competitive pay" in job listings to finding ways to pay as little as they can get away with, many businesses in no way offer compensation that truly is competitive, that sets them apart from other employers or that legitimately rewards people even at the level of a minimum livable wage. The phrase itself can be rather commonplace, but it is rarer to find an employer who expresses clarity and philosophical accuracy with the words. What actually makes compensation, the thing which employment is ultimately all about and without which employment would be inherently exploitative [1], competitive?
The concept behind the words signifies that one thing competes with another in the equivalent category, in this case the amount of pay tied to particular jobs or companies. Here, the financial incentives offered by one company are supposed to rival or surpass those of another. It is easy for irrationalistic employers to lie about what they offer their workers to compel them to accept a position in or after an interview. However, linguistically classifying pay as competitive does not mean it is any better than what can be found elsewhere, however low or unjust that might be in either case. If moral labor rights exist, including the Biblical ones, livable pay is the right of all workers (if not paying workers before the next sunset for each task/shift is mandatory as put forth by Leviticus 19:13 and Deuteronomy 24:14-15, how much more vital and righteous is ensuring their pay is actually livable!); competitive pay has to go beyond that to actually exceed what would be required as it is.
Employers, if you want to offer competitive pay in the fullest sense, the compensation must not be the bare minimum (morally or pragmatically) for what is actually livable or simply be better than the abysmal wages/salaries of other organizations. It must not only provide a livable amount of money (which is not $7.25 per hour [2]) at the full time level, but it also must go further than this by rewarding people to the point that it is especially appealing to literally give up their very finite time and energy for the sake of your business. Employment of some kind, as necessary as it is to not live as a thief or a farmer/hunter-gatherer, truly does eat away at a person's life freedom. Incentivizing lasting, genuine eagerness to work necessitates that the benefit to employees for exchanging their time, attention, and perhaps health for money must be a more than just enough to not be exploitative.
Competitive pay in this sense would thus not be a default moral requirement if there is such a thing as a right to livable compensation; it would indeed be above and beyond, and thus could never be obligatory. Not mistreating workers, if such a thing as morality exists, is all that an employer could be obligated to do (whatever the obligations towards them, failing to fulfill them would be mistreatment). This might not be enough to win over prospective hires or retain current employees if another organization freely grants its own workers something better. In this sense, to compete with other businesses for the time, effort, and loyalty of workers--in a manner that is not merely better but still not enough--means an employer has to make it quite beneficial to spend time away from hobbies and friends or family and instead in the workplace.
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