Lecture 8 - WORK PLACE I

In fact, support the importance of fairness when it comes to wages and how helpful do you think
the guidelines that Shaw provides really are is there anything missing would it cover all of the
possible concerns that could arise no note Libertarians I would say that it's obviously wrong for
any government or group of people to require that a company pays its workers a minimum wage
and he can probably articulate the argument that they would make it this point but what about
utilitarians and Kantian would they look at the issue of the minimum wage but the question well
worth thinking about and

one of the ways of course weight

we also know that employers simply have more power when negotiating than workers, even
collectively, so we rely on the education that sources and the machines and everything else
made available by others.
so we have to find a way to make money to survive. This organized worker so groups of
individuals who do their own thing tend to be willing to work in pretty poorly paid and unsafe
work simply because they don't feel that they have any other options.
The formation of labour unions came about in order to empower individual workers and allow
them to organize so that they could negotiate in mass and made them much more powerful than
you versus the company the one worker who demands a higher wage alone.

it's obviously probably going to lose their job, particularly with that will employment but
hundreds of workers who simultaneously demand higher wages are much more likely to get
what they need.
none of this implies that workers should join employers who pay low wages are just and moral
but it is understandable by workers would want to unionize.

One of the most famous cases that led to the formation of unions is the Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory Fire in 1911. so this happened in New York City and it's one of the deadliest industrial
disasters in in US history.
we've probably seen this before some of you so unfortunately this led to 146 deaths 123 women
and 23 men died in this fire, because of smoke inhalation or they jumped out of the building and
I unfortunately didn't survive.
the question is what happened will the employers lock the doors to the stairwells in the exits to
prevent workers from taking, what they considered to be unauthorized break and to reduce
theft.
so that might be really good for making sure that workers are in fact working the entire day
through, but when a fire broke out there was no chance to unlock the doors because they used
to nail them shut and that is what led to this catastrophe.
so this horror flick fire led to legislation requiring improve Factory safety standards and of
course It ultimately spurred the growth of the international ladies garment Workers Union which
fought for better working conditions for what at the time was a sweatshop so this building in New
York City has been designated a National Historic Landmark and you can still go and see it
today.
But we also know that In 1911 the same sort of conflict of interest still a rise in so this is a study
or this is a story that was originally published in 2005 but it does speak to some of the
well-known practices of companies like Wal-Mart, in fact, Walmart is famously anti-Union and
requires new hires sometimes, this is hundreds of thousands of people to watch a video that the
rides organized labour .

Talking about how dangerous it is and how it all ultimately harms individual workers, managers
are in fact trained to misrepresent unions as uncaring businesses with little concern for workers'
welfare but a large interest in getting a hold of a worker's paycheck.

In 2004 when now we see the same thing with Amazon and of course not surprisingly we see
the same sorts of arguments that Walmart has been making since the early 2000's.

we see Amazon making or Amazon making today, in the face of some of the employees unrest
so Amazon has successfully stopped unionization efforts for the past 25 years.
they they are quite famous for their tactics; for example the company close to call centre in
2000 after the communication workers of America launched a campaign to unionize 400
Customer Service employee. It also uses intelligence analysts who track employees to identify
potential organizing threats; this is what they call it, "labour organizing threats," and data from
employees and customers that indicate any kind of sympathy or union tendencies is used to
make hiring decisions and determine who will get advancements or pay raises.

the one important moral issue Involving unions is one is morally wrong for workers to strike so
some believe that strikes of course can be immoral because they can harm businesses so are
they right about this and if so how would we know that there right about it boycotts and Strikes
can violate the expected loyalty than employees have for their employers but this also raises
some some significant questions
do workers own loyalty to their employers and if so how can we be sure that strikes are ever
really ethical so we'll do we have a general right to non-injury the harm done by strikes are
indirect and some people think that strikes are in fact never wrong so those are two very
different ways of looking at stripes their argument is we should never be forced to work for
companies and without the right to strike we lose any ability to negotiate with him now it strikes
or immoral and cause harm
Then there's the argument that strikes must be a last resort. This is a general moral rule against
injuring people, not necessarily union strikes. If it's ever right to harm others, it has to be our
very last option, or so many people believe, but is this rule too strict or is it even justified? Does
it fit in the discussion about unions at all?
For utilitarianism Their argument would be to produce on balance the best outcomes for the
greatest number of people so in this case striking workers could assert their rights and make
their needs known to the owners. so utilitarian could in fact Justified the right to strike
Kantians might argue that strikes are consistent with moral dignity and autonomy because it
treats people as ends in themselves and not simply cogs in the machine or nor means.
Strikes, according to social contract theory, can be based on the concept of justice, that it is only
justice to have people's interests represented rather than being treated as voiceless people
owned by their employers or as machines.

you might be able to think of arguments against unions maybe they do in fact cause harm
maybe it is not necessarily in the interests of employees to form negotiating groups but if that's
the case then you would want to make sure that you make your argument morally relevant

So a good example of some of these issues especially the extent to which an employer can
extend their authority over an employee and their private lives is case 8.3 although all of the
cases at the end of the chapter of course quite good especially relevant problem because many
of us live at least part of our Lives online so that our comments in our activities and personal
views are made public words in previous generations that wasn't really the case so when we
talked publicly now we're not just talking to our specific Social Circle but a lot of your comments
end up becoming available for the entire world including your potential or current employers do
case 8.3 involves kind of an interesting case of an employee facing action from their employer
for writing an essay about their personal views and this case is in fact related to recent story you
might have seen in the news in fact it made quite a splash when it came out this was the case of
Gina Carano who works on the Mandalorian so her employer lucasfilm announced that there
were no plans for the actor to come back after what it called her