Deducting an employee’s salary for absence

Question

Question: A person hired a servant for one year; then after two or four months the servant left, and later came back. When the master paid the servant his salary for the year, he deducted two rupees per day, which comes to one hundred and fifty rupees. Is it right to deduct this money or not?

Answer

It is right to divide the year’s salary over the days and deduct the salary for the days of absence, just as, if a house is rented for a year, it is right to divide that rent over the days, or it is right to divide the rent over the stages of the journey (marahil)! In al-Durr al-Mukhtar, in Kitab al-Ijara, it says: [ar]وللمؤجر طلب الأجر كل يوم، وللدابة كل مرحلة.

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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