Moral Rights in the

Workplace
Prepared by:
Jenny-Bee T. Agcaoili
CONTENT OF DISCUSSION

• PARTICIPATION RIGHTS
• EMPLOYEE HEALTH AND SAFETY
• PRIVACY IN THE WORKPLACE
• REFLECTIONS ON THE CHAPTER DISCUSSION CASE
PARTICIPATION RIGHTS
Managerial authority
ought to be constrained by
due process rights
What gives business owners and
managers authority, rather than
mere power, over employees?
 John McCall has argued that
managerial authority must also
be derived from the consent of
the governed.
McCall offers five arguments to
defend his claim that employees
should have a right to participate
in managerial decision making.
Right to be treated with respect
• individuals be treated as autonomous decision makers
• free from coercive interference by others
• respect for dignity
The fundamental objective of any
morality— the impartial promotion
of human welfare.

• Every individual has a fundamental right to impartial and fair treatment.

• . When decisions are made, the interests of every party affected by that decision
must be given due consideration
Rights for an Employee participation in
business decision making

• participatory management will create conditions of self-respect for

employees
• McCall believes that employees who participate in and contribute to
decision making are less likely to suffer the mental and physical harms of
alienation and burnout
• McCall cites the political danger of voter apathy and indifference
Three major objections to proposals for
employee rights to participate in
business decision making

• Employer property rights,

• managerial expertise,
• and considerations of efficiency
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EMPLOYEE HEALTH AND SAFETY
Protecting employee health and
safety is certainly one of the
business’s major ethical
responsibilities
 Like work itself, health and safety are
goods that are valued both as a means
for attaining other valuable ends and
as ends in themselves
But what does it mean to be
healthy?

When is a workplace safe?

When is it unsafe?
what does it mean to be
healthy?
showing physical, mental, or emotional well-being : evincing
good health

what does it mean to be safe?

protected from or not exposed to danger or risk
Risks can be defined as the
probability of harm, and relative
risks would entail comparing the
probabilities of harm involved in
various activities.
Consider an example offered by philosopher Mark Sagoff.

Sagoff attended a conference addressing potential health hazards faced by

neighbors of a toxic waste dump. Citizens had learned of a high rate of
leukemia among area residents. Government and corporate officials responded
that these fears were irrational because the relative risks involved in living
near this waste site were much lower than those faced by smokers. Because
people commonly accept the risks involved with smoking, and because
experts could show that risks of living near the waste site were lower than
those, the government and corporate experts could assure the citizens that they
faced an acceptable level of risk.
Individual bargaining between employers
and employees would be the approach to
workplace health and safety favored by
defenders of the free market and the
classical model of corporate social
responsibility
Individual Bargaining

• A negotiation between an individual employee and an employer, usually in relation

to pay and working conditions.
PRIVACY IN THE WORKPLACE
the need for a common
understanding of privacy has become
increasingly important for
employees.
Two general understandings of
privacy :

1.privacy as a right to be “let alone” within a personal zone of solitude

2.and privacy as the right to control information about oneself.

Warren and Brandeis argued that increasing population
and technological advances (e.g., photojournalism) was
increasing the threat to the solitude of individual
citizens. In their view, the law should recognize a right
to “be let alone.” Seventy-five years later in Griswold
v. Connecticut the U.S. Supreme Court relied on a
similar understanding in recognizing a constitutionally
guarnteed right to privacy.
courts have concluded that individuals
ought to be left alone only in certain
very personal decisions, such as those
involving family, reproduction,
sexuality, home life, and life-sustaining
medical treatment.
Concerns that privacy as the right to be
let alone is too broad have led some to
conclude that a better understanding of
privacy focuses on privacy as
involving the control of personal
information.
One way to preserve one’s own
personal integrity and individuality is
by limiting access of personal
information.
The right to control certain very personal decisions and
information help determine the kind of person we are and the
person we become.

To the degree that we value individuality and treating each person

as an individual, we ought to recognize that certain personal
decisions and information are rightfully the exclusive domain of
the individual
What are the implications of this
for the workplace?
The nature of that relationship will
help determine the appropriate
boundary between employers and
employees
if employees work totally “at will”
and are fully subject to the demands
of employers, it might well be that
employees have no legitimate
expectation of privacy within the
workplace.
Contractual Model of Employment

-where the conditions and terms of employment are subject to

the mutual and informed consent of both parties
Employee privacy is violated
whenever:

• Employers infringe upon personal decisions that are irrelevant to the

employment contract

2. Whenever personal information that is irrelevant to that contract is collected,

stored, or used without the informed consent of the employee.
REFLECTIONS ON THE CHAPTER
DISCUSSION CASE
the distinction between authority and
power rests upon the ethical
justification of the control over
another
 A large part of justifying employer
authority over employees stems from
the claim that employees have,
explicitly or implicitly, consented to
the terms and conditions of the
workplace.
Each of the cases described in the
opening section of this chapter
involve questions of consent and
expectations of privacy.
Quon relied on his employer’s
approval of using workplace pagers
for personal texting as assurance that
his texts would not be read by his
employer.
Leone clearly, and Colvin presumably,
freely chose to post information on a
publicly accessible website.
Whether they consent implicitly or
not, many observers conclude that
they should not have been
surprised when this happened
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