PAYCOM: A Question on Worker's Rights

At the company where (let's say) a friend of mine works, they've recently begun using a new payroll system called Beti. It's from a company called Paycom, which is thrilled to inform you that Beti won the 2021 Top HR Product from Human Resource Executive. The product's tagline is, "NOW EMPLOYEES DO THEIR OWN PAYROLL." I'm no HR expert, but I think I can hazard a guess at why HR executives would be so excited about this product.

The company where (let's say) my friend works is in the middle of splintering off from its parent company. It's juggling numerous fiscal issues, and it has an HR "staff" of exactly one person. She's nice. She's overworked. My friend can certainly understand why the company would want to make her job easier. To my friend--a simple man, not versed in the ethical magnificence of corporate CEOs--the obvious solution would be to hire another HR person, for pity's sake.

But then, my friend is not in charge of a multi-million-dollar company. My friend's peon intellect can hardly be expected to comprehend these lofty matters. Evidently, it makes perfect sense to a multi-million-dollar company to put full-time factory workers (who are, by definition, not trained HR specialists and who are also, by definition, already slightly busy with their full-time jobs) in charge of doing their own payrolls. My friend has no doubt that the company has the best interests of the workers at heart. After all, the extra salary which the company would have to pay for a new HR person will be divvied up amongst the factory workers as compensation for the extra work they're now doing on their own time--right? And when (not if!) these untrained, already-full-time factory workers make mistakes on their own payrolls, the company will go out of its way to ensure that no misallocated funds end up in the CEO's pocket.

. . .Right?

My friend remembers the Four Sins that cry to Heaven for vengeance: murder, sodomy, oppression of the poor, and the withholding of a worker's just wage. He believes justice will find those who swindle the people that have no recourse in this world. He remembers, too, the words of Ecclesiastes: "The laborer's slumber is sweet, whether he has much or little; but the rich man's abundance will not allow him to sleep." In short, there is justice even in this world, although we may not see it for ourselves.

But perhaps my friend is too cynical. If there's one thing we've learned, it's that monolithic corporations can always be--

Nope. I can't type that sentence, even as a bitter joke.