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Desjardins5e ppt ch6
- 1. CHAPTER SIX: MORAL RIGHTS IN THE WORKPLACE
Copyright © 2014 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.
- 2. Introduce the concept of moral rights
Distinguish moral rights from legal and contractual rights
Explain and examine various meanings of a right to work
Examine arguments supporting an employee right to due process
Distinguish due process from the legal doctrine of employment at will
Examine arguments supporting an employee right to participation
Examine arguments supporting an employee right to workplace health
and safety
Examine arguments supporting an employee right to privacy
Copyright © 2014 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. 6-2
- 3. Is it reasonable that an employer tracks your
trips via GPS?
Is it reasonable that your employer or
potential employer asks for your password to
review your Facebook page?
What are your rights?
What is your expectation of privacy?
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- 4. The Jeff Quon case (police officer)
The Dawnmarie Souza case (ambulance company
employee)
The Kevin Colvin case (intern)
The Dan Leone case (stadium worker)
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- 5. Three senses of employee rights are common in
business:
- There are legal rights granted on the basis of
legal/judicial rulings
- There rights based on contractual agreements
with employers
- There rights that exist as entitlements, resulting
from our status as humans
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- 6. If work is necessary to secure such central primary
goods as food, clothing and shelter, a right to
work seems a likely candidate for being a moral
right.
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- 7. There are various understandings of the right to
work
Refers to a right to work without having to join a
union
Refers to employees right to a job
Rationale 1: the instrumental value of work, providing
means to acquire food and shelter, etc.
Rationale 2: work is the expression of a meaningful life
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- 8. Critics distinguish between rights and desirable
states of affairs
Rights imply responsibility on the part of others to
provide what is claimed by that right
But does this perspective place an undue burden on
private employers?
If so, place the burden upon government to provide
incentives and subsidies
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- 9. But should government be placed in the position
of providing jobs to any citizen who desires one?
Wouldn’t placing government in this position
produce too much inefficiency, thus creating
economic and political turmoil?
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- 10. What if government supplied protection for jobs,
rather than jobs?
The belief seems to be that governments have a
responsibility to encourage private sector
employment for all its citizens. As a last resort,
the government has a duty to supply jobs.
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- 11. There is another sense to a right to work: the
right, once hired, to hold that job with some
degree of security.
This becomes a right to due process.
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- 12. Historically courts have been loath to recognize
obligations other than those explicitly agreed to
by the parties concerned (contracts)
An “at will” contract is one that exists only so
long as both parties consent or, conversely, can
be broken at the discretion of either party
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- 13. “all may dismiss their employee(s) at will, be they
many or few, for good cause, for no cause, or
even for cause morally wrong”
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- 14. Within the United States the legal doctrine of
employment at will is limited
From the beginning applied only to the private sector
Applied only to noncontract employees
Employees are protected from firing on the basis of
sex and race, disability, safety complaints, and union
support
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- 15. The courts have recently ruled on
Public policy exemption
Implied contract exemption
Implied covenant of good faith
Yet, the legal burden of proof, of wrongful termination,
rests with employees. Absent such proof, employers
may fire at will
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- 16. Due Process (per legem terrae: by the law of the
land)
In the workplace due process refers to employees’
right to be protected from the arbitrary use of
managerial authority.
Procedures must be established to ensure that
dismissal is not arbitrary.
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- 17. What are the acceptable reasons for dismissal?
(just cause)
What is the process that an employer must go
through to discharge an employee?
Who is responsible for making these policies
known?
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- 18. The strongest defense of an employee’s right to
due process appeals to the fundamental ethical
concepts of respect and fairness.
Due Process rights establish the criteria for the
justification of dismissal by outlining just cause
conditions or by creating procedural safeguards
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- 19. There are four counterarguments to the right of
due process:
- Due process involves an illegitimate restriction
on the freedom of individuals to establish the
conditions of their own work
- If employees are free to quit for any reason,
then employers should be free to fire employees
for any reason
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- 20. There are four counterarguments to the right of
due process:
- Due process is an illegitimate restriction on the
property rights of business owners
- Without fear of dismissal as motivation,
workers will likely become inefficient and
unproductive
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- 21. Patricia Werhane responds to the first two
arguments by pointing out the significant
inequality between employees and employers
Werhane points out, in response to the third
argument, that property rights in the workplace
do not include employees
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- 22. With regards to the final argument against due
process
- If the cost of economic efficiency is the violation of
employee rights to respect, autonomy and fairness,
then we must conclude that efficiency be sacrificed
- Due process does not guarantee an unqualified
right to a job
- Workers provided with job security and due
process can be more productive than those without
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- 23. Does managerial authority rest upon the consent
of employees?
Is workplace democracy justifiable?
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- 24. John McCall offers five argument to defend the
claim that employees have a right to participate
in managerial decision making:
- The fundamental right to be treated with
respect
- The impartial promotion of human welfare
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- 25. John McCall’s five argument continued:
- Creating conditions of employee self-respect
- Creating conditions to prevent mental and
physical harm
- Creating an environment that will foster
political participation
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- 26. There are three objectives to McCall’s proposals
Employer property rights
Managerial expertise
Conditions of efficiency
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- 27. Protecting employee health and safety is one of
business’ major ethical responsibilities
This is a complicated issue:
Health and safety have instrumental as well as
intrinsic value
Acceptable risks need to be defined
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- 28. Several problems
Paternalistic attitudes towards employees
Assumption that health and safety are preferences
that can be traded off
Assumptions that workplace risks and other types of
risks are equivalent
A free market approach is based on the faulty
assumption that markets are perfectly competitive
and free
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- 29. Several problems (continued)
Employees seldom possess perfect information
required by markets
Individual considerations ignore social justice and
public policy
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- 30. Occupational Safety and Health Administration
(1970)
Technological feasibility
Economic feasibility
But does this approach go far enough? Does OSHA
sacrifice employee health and safety?
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- 31. From the perspective of OSHA, industries that
cannot operate without harming the health and
safety of its employees should be closed
From the perspective of OSHA, even if a standard
is technologically and economically feasible, it
would still be unreasonable and unfair if the
benefits did not outweigh the costs
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- 32. Cost-benefit analysis
Cost-effective strategies
Employees have a legitimate ethical claim on
mandatory health and safety standards within
the workplace.
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- 33. Two meanings to Privacy
Privacy: the right to be let alone within a
personal zone of solitude (Warren & Brandeis,
1890)
Privacy: the right to control information about
oneself
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- 34. Is the definition of Privacy as the right to be let
alone too broad?
If so, then the clearest definition of privacy
involves the control of personal information
But what if this definition is too broad?
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- 35. George Brenkert argues that informational
privacy involves a relationship between two
parties and information about a third
Privacy is violated only when one of the people
in the relationship comes to know the third
party, while the other party does not
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- 36. With regards to the control of personal
information, a violation of privacy exists only
between those having a personal relationship
What are the implications of this control of
information for the workplace?
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- 37. What is the nature of the relationship between
employer and employee?
Employee privacy is violated when
Employers infringe upon personal decisions irrelevant to the
employment contract
When personal information irrelevant to the contract is
collected, stored or used without the informed consent of the
employee
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- 38. Consider two cases from the beginning of the
chapter:
A police chief read officers’ personal text messages
on their city-issued pagers, even though the officers
paid for overage fees related to those text messages
An interviewee was no longer considered for a job
after he refused to give the interviewer the password
to his Facebook page so that she could review it
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