Workplace 1

Civil liberties in the workplace

Employees want to do well at their
assignments, to get along with their
colleagues, and to have their contribution to
the organization recognized.
David Ewing's two historical factors, lie
behind the absence of civil liberties and the
prevalence of authoritarianism in the
workplace.
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1. The rise of professional management and personnel

Engineering.
2. The law has the traditionally given the employee a free
hand in hiring and firing employees
The employee is also duty bound "not to act or speak
disloyally" except in pursuit of his own interests outside
work.
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Companies that look beyond the

bottomline

Some very successful companies

have taken the lead in respecting
employees rights and human dignity.
Corporate profits and efficient
management are compatible with a
fair workplace environment
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In 1987 Montana - the first and only

state in the nation to enact legislation
that workers cannot be fired without
"good cause".
Even without explicit legislation,
wrongfully dismissed employees
frequently have legal recourse.
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 US supreme court - has ruled that a

state cannot deny unemployment
benefits to employees who are fired
because they refuse to work on Sabbath
day, even if they aren't members of an
organized religion

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Co. lead encouraging rights

Delta Airlines

open communication
encourage employee questions and criticisms about co.
policies affecting welfare of employees & community.

General Electric & New England Tel

open communication hotline for questions & worries.

Dow Chemical

open co. publications to employee.

 Polaroid
union contracts
has well-institutionalized comm. whose job is to
represent an employee with a grievance(feeling of
treated unfairly).
Johnson Wax, Donnely Mirror, Proctor & Gamble, Aetna
Life and Casualty, Lincoln Electric, and Russell Corp.
supports no layoff policies
William Hewlett, CEO of Hewlett-Packard
supports no layoff
set up working sched of 9-days out of 10.

 Moral duty of co.:

respect the rights & dignity of employees
acknowledge civil liberties
guarantee due process
enhance employee morale

Sidney Harmon, CEO of Harmon Int'l Industries

says, "honoring people who do work can produce
stunning results for the co."

 Robert Levering & Milton Moskowitz

say, "authoritarian work style failed because of poor
performance & massive layoffs.

trust is the key: employees tell what co. has genuine regard
for employees & pretends to have moral concern.
Pacific Bell
won high marks for humane response to the AIDS probs.
committed to keeping employees wit h AIDS on the job.

Workplace should provide environment w/c employees are

treated fairly & their inherent dignity respected.

 A company that does not sincerely consider

employee rights of inherent moral
importance is not likely to reap the benefits
of enhanced business performance. Trust, as
more and more management theorists are
saying is the KEY here

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 It is a moral duty of companies to

respect the rights and dignity of their
employees, in particular by
acknowledging their civil liberties
and guaranteeing them due process,
but doing so can also work to the
company's benefit by enhancing
employee morale and thus, the
company's competitive performance
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Personnel policies and

procedures
Hiring - A basic task of employer or
personnel manager
Employers generally seek to hire people who
will enable the organization to produce the
products or services it seeks to provide or to
promote its other goals
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 The courts have used the principle of

negligent hiring to broaden the liability
of an employer for damage or injury
caused by its employees -- even after
regular hours and away from the job
site
Principal steps involve in the process of
hiring: screening, testing and
interviewing
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 Screening - to attract those applicants

who have a good chance of qualifying
for the job
- ensures a pool of competent
candidates and guarantees that
everyone has been dealt with fairly;
when done improperly, it undermines
effective recruitment and invites
injustices into the hiring process
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 Screening begins with:

1. Job description - lists all pertinent details
about a job, including its duties,
responsibilities, working conditions and
physical requirements
2. Job specification - describes the
qualifications an employee needs, such as
skills, educational experience, appearance
and physical attributes. Completeness is
important
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Incomplete or non-specific job

descriptions can injure
applicants by denying them
information they need to
reach informed occupational
decisions
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 Ordinarily, question of sex, age, race

national origin and religion are non-job
related and thus would not enter into
personnel decisions.
Life style and ill considered
educational requirements may also be
unfair.
Discrimination against disabled is now
expressly forbidden by law.
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Tests
Testing is an integral part of hiring process,
especially with large firms.
It is generally designed to measure the applicants
verbal, quantitative, and logical skills
To be successful, a test must be valid and reliable.
Validity refers to whether the test scores
correlate with performance

 Aptitude tests help determine an applicants

suitability for the job
Skills Test measure the applicants proficiency
in specific areas, such as typing and shorthand
Personality tests help determine the
applicants
maturity and sociability

Interviews
When moral issues arise in interviewing,
they almost always relate to the manner in
which the interview was conducted
The literature of personnel management
rightly cautions against rudeness,
coarseness, hostility and condescension in
interviewing job applicants

Interviewers must exercise

care to avoid thoughtless
comments that may hurt or
insult the person being
interviewed

Promotions
3 factors that sometimes serve as bases for
promotions
1.Seniority longevity on a job or with a firm.
It is not necessarily a measure of either
competency or loyalty. The challenge of
management is to accommodate its twin
responsibilities of promoting on the basis of
qualifications and recognizing long-term
contributions to the company
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 For types of discharge:

a.Firing for-cause dismissal
b.Termination employees poor
performance
c.Lay-off hourly employees subject to
recall
d.Position elimination result of
workforce reduction
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 Firing a worker is painfully difficult, t times

possible. In part to help the managers
perform the dirty job of terminating,
enlightened org. are enlisting the services
of displacement companies
2. Inbreeding promoting exclusively
within the organization, presents
challenges similar to those presented by
seniority
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3. Nepotism showing favouritism to

relatives or close friends is not always
objectionable, but it may overlook
managerial responsibilities to the org. and
may result in unfair treatment of other
employees
Most moral issues in employee discipline
and discharge concern how management
carries out this unpleasant tasks.
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 Due process and just cause must

operate is treatment is to be fair
Due process requires that there be
procedures for workers to appeal
discipline and discharge
To ease the trauma associated with
discharge, employers would provide
sufficient warning, severance pay and
perhaps displacement counseling
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Wages
What constitute it?
Many variables are involved
Contribution to the firm
Market for labour and product
Competitive position of the company
Bargaining power of the firm and union
Seasonal labour fluctuations
Individual needs
Renumeration
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 The factors that bear on the fairness of wages

include:
the law
the prevailing wage in the industry
the community wage level
The nature of the job
The security of the job
The companies financial capabilities
And the wages it is paying other employees
for comparable work
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 Also important are job performance

and the manner in which the wage is
established.
Fairness requires a legitimate work
contract, one arrived at through free
negotiation and informed and
mutual consent
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History of the union movement

According to Franklin D. Roosevelt, free and
independent labor unions are Characteristic of a
free and democratic modern nation.
Many economist go to primary credits for raising
standard of living and increasing the security.
Almost all the benefits today whether unions or
not, can be traced to union victories or to union
backed legislation.

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 Higher wages, paid vacations, health benefits,

retirement pensions, and increased job security
that unions have brought have, in turn,
contributed to social stability and economic
growth of the country
Craft Unions of 18th Century
Group of skilled artisans formed secret societies
for two basic reasons:
A. To equalize their relationship with their
employers
B. To professionalize their crafts
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 Setting minimal admission standards for their

craft.
Agreed to keep their allegiance secret

Knights of Labor in 1869

First truly national trade unions

It assembled in one labor organization both
skilled and unskilled workers from industry
Friction and destructive rivalries also broke out
between the organizations more radical
national leadership
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 The cause of unionism was

significantly advanced in 1935 with
the passage of the National Labor
Relations Act (also called the wagner
act)
The act helped increase union
membership to almost 12 million by
the end of WWII in 1945
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 Congress of Industrial Organizations

(CIO) the offshoot of the AFL that
brought together various workers into
industry wide unions
Union abuse of power
Taft-Harley Act
In recent years, many corporate
managements have become increasingly
and aggressively anti-union
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Union Ideals
Union attempts to protect workers from
abuse and give them a voice in matters that
affect their lives
Critics charge that forcing workers to join
unions infringes in autonomy at the right of
association
They allege that union workers receive
discriminatory and unlawful favoritism
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 Unions viewpoint reveals competing

ideals and other consequences that
must be considered
1. There is organized labors ideal of
solidarity, which is vital to collective
bargaining and to winning worker
quality
2. There is a question of fairness
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Union Tactics
1.Direct strikes justified, argue some moral
theorists, when there is cause and proper
authorization and when it is called last resort
2.Sympathetic strikes involve the cessation of
work in support of other workers with a
grievance. When the companies involved are
different, questions arise concerning possible
injury and injustice to innocent employers,
consumers and workers.
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Primary boycotts refusing to patronize

being struck seem morally comparable to
direct strikes
Secondary boycotts refusing to
patronize companies handling products of
struck companies are morally analogous to
sympathetic strikes. In corporate campaigns,
unions enlist the cooperation of a companys
creditors to pressure the company to permit
unionization or to comply with union demands
3.

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