As Rashi explains (see, in particular, his comments on the Mishnah in Bekhorot 29a), that means that in the situations where we either have to compensate someone as a po’el batel, or can reduce his compensation by the level of po’el batel (as we will see below), it refers to the amount of money a person would be willing to take for not working at their chosen profession. For example, if a doctor makes a certain salary, how much would that doctor be willing to take if it meant not going to work at all?

Even before we note the areas of halakhah where this term has meaning, it is worth pausing for a moment to consider its ramifications for our attitudes towards work. What is the amount of money that we would accept and leave our jobs—what kind of pension guarantee would lead someone to take early retirement? It is a question worth pondering because it reveals the extent to which members of various professions are working for the money or for some other goal. Rashi noted that those who work at physically harder jobs will be more likely to retire for a lower percentage of their salary than those who work at physically less taxing jobs, since the latter group's work isn't that hard. Is the physical component of a job the one best geared to predicting a person's willingness to take early retirement today?

To begin the examples of where the po’el batel standard of pay affects halakhah, we should look at the case of a person who injures another. The Torah demands that the aggressor pay the victim his/her shevet, lost wages. The gemara in Baba Kama 83b defines shevet as paying the person ke-po'el batel shel otah melakhah, meaning that the injured person receives the portion of his/her usual salary that an ordinary person would be willing to accept for not having to go to work. Interestingly, the gemara does not require the aggressor to pay all of the lost salary, since the injured person will not actually be doing the work. While that rest is forced, in other words, the gemara still assumes that some portion of wages is only earned by actually expending the energy involved in performing the required work; a person who is not doing so cannot lay claim to that portion of salary.

Returning a lost object can similarly cost a person time and wages. As Shulhan Arukh summarizes the issue in Hoshen Mishpat 265, one who was working at a job can expect to be compensated as a po’el batel of that type of job. Here, Rema actually articulates a higher level of pay— the person can demand the reasonable wages one would pay a person for returning an object (meaning that returning lost items can be seen as a job, with a certain market value). That Rema assumes the pay for that would be higher than for a po’el batel suggests that people were willing to accept much less money than their usual pay in order to be allowed not to work, again focusing our attention on their attitudes towards work and money..

In a perhaps more relevant case, if two people enter a partnership where one partner provides the money and the other the work, they cannot simply split the profits evenly. The gemara conceives of such a partnership as being mehtsah pikadon, mehtsah halva'ah, that half of the money is a deposit made by the person providing the money, whereas the other half is a loan to the one who is going to invest the money. If they simply split the profits evenly, they create the appearance that the partner providing the money is getting the other partner’s work for free, or in additional compensation for having provided the loan, which comes close enough to paying interest that Hazal prohibited it. To remedy the problem, the working partner can either take a salary (at least as a po'el batel of his usual line of work), or an extra share of the profits (with no corresponding extra exposure to loss). Here, the po'el batel notion sets the minimum for what would be regarded as reasonable salary.

One final example worth mentioning is where an employer cannot provide the promised employment. If, for example, someone agrees to hire a person for a full day, and the work gets completed before the day is up, the employer is required to pay for the rest of the day. To the extent that there is no work to be done, however, the employer only has to pay that person ke-po’el batel (the employer also has the right to have the employee work for someone else who does have work available, although then the employee would get a full salary.

For some occupations, however, we assume the employee would rather work, and therefore has the right to full compensation. Physical laborers, for example, are assumed to prefer to work since they get out of shape in taking time off and are not as able to work hard for their next employer. Similarly, at least some teachers are seen as preferring teaching to idleness, particularly because of the challenge that students can provide. In these cases, then, work is of itself some kind of value, and cannot be replaced by the freedom to do what one wants. Shabbat Shalom.