If "employer", "employee", and "wages" were replaced with "tenant", "landlord", and "rent", respectively, would the same still hold? If not, why not?
You have invented a villain who does not exist.
There are a number of reasons rents paid to landlords are treated somewhat differently from wages paid to workers! Those are deeply political and important, and not super relevant here
In the narrowly relevant question: No one would ever accept a spite-filled "rent" paid to a landlord in the form of oil-covered pennies, provided only as a means of spiting the creditor