Employment at Will and Due Process - Assignment Example

"Employment at Will and Due Process," by Patricia H. Werhane and Tara J. Radin, is an article that argues against the principle of employment at will(EAW). Werhane and Radin argue that all employees, regardless of whether they work for public or private businesses, deserve to be informed they are being terminated from employment. This article makes some valid arguments but is also lacking in many aspects. While I agree with some of the points made in this article, my own view differs from that of the authors. Putting my perspectives aside momentarily, there are obvious intellectual strengths and weaknesses to the authors' writing. The greatest intellectual strength is the inclusion of arguments made against their own point. If the authors had failed to include opposing arguments, their article would have been very one-sided and un-credible. It is important for readers to understand both sides of an argument before understanding which side is right or wrong (if there are, in fact, objectively right and wrong sides). This strength of the article, however, also proved to be somewhat of a weakness, because some of the opposing arguments were left unchallenged by the authors. One of the most interesting and perhaps most valid arguments made in this article is that the differences between private and public businesses are becoming less and less clear. Werhane and Radin put forth the notion that public businesses are businesses that cater to the public good before trying to make a profit whereas private businesses function for profit only. While this seems hard to define a business by for legal issues, I have heard that private businesses are marked by having 25 employees or less. I dislike these sort of bright-line policies where a difference of only 1 (say 26 employees instead of 25) makes a tremendous difference in applicable policy. The authors could have used this point to further argue their perspective, but since they did not I will now return to what they did say. Werhane and Radin backed their argument, that the line once drawn between private and public businesses is fading, by a case study involving General Motors (GM). The scenario explained in this article is that the private company GM was declared, by the Supreme Court, able to take over property to expand because if was for the "common good" even though, as a private company, its primary goal is profitability. On the authors' parts, this is a valid argument and it was good to utilize this case study as evidence of their point. (I would have liked more case studies to be used to give solid examples of their arguments.) While the case study does illustrate their point, it is actually not that simple, however. When this happened, it was likely the topic of much subjective debate, because many people may have disagreed with the Supreme Court's ruling. Furthermore, the actual intentions of the Supreme Court may not have been quite so innocent. Corruption is ugly, but it is widespread. Important figures within the Supreme Court could have been easily influenced by a promise of shared wealth from GM. This just goes to show that while the Supreme Court's actions may have led the authors to believe that there is little difference between private and public businesses but really, the ruling of Supreme Court may have been swayed by external factors and its implications are thus inconclusive. Additionally, although Werhane and Radin tried to say that private businesses are like public businesses because they can be deemed as putting efforts towards achieving the common good, I believe it may more often be the other way around. Do public businesses actually put common good before profitability Without profit, businesses cannot succeed. Perhaps, then, public businesses are similar to private businesses, because they do put profit first. Maybe before saying that private businesses should be legislated like public businesses, further effort in determining what defines private versus public is needed. There are several significant intellectual weaknesses I found to be present in this article. Perhaps one of the most prominent weaknesses is that there is a clear bias that favors employee rights over employer rights. For example, Werhane and Radin argue that an employer's ability to fire an employee without notice or reason is much more damaging to an employee than the employee's ability to quit without notice or reason is damaging to the employer. This proclaimed inequality between the abilities of employees and employers is, in my opinion, immeasurable. It is a question of preference towards either employee or employer rather than a matter of facts and figures. They argue that when an employee is fired without notice or reason it can significantly hurt their chances of finding a new job. However, an employee leaving their job unexpectedly without any sort of notice or reason can make things very difficult for their employer. It is hard for an employer to compensate for their absence because they are not left with adequate time to find a replacement for that particular position. If the employee left without reason it also makes it hard for the employer to know what went wrong or if improvements in employment conditions are necessary. Additionally, it looks very bad, to both customers and potential employees, for a business to have a high turn-over rate. Like Werhane and Radin were so quick to point out, employers firing employees unexpectedly can have negative consequences on those employees. But employees quitting unexpectedly can have just as bad effects on the employers they left. The authors seem to forget that the people who own businesses are people also. Sure - business owners may care only about profits, but aren't people working for the businesses just trying to fill their pockets, too Another aspect of this article that I found troubling was that the authors did not seem to address the EAW as a whole. The only part of the EAW that they really challenged and discussed in-depth was the issue of employers being able to fire employees without reason. There are other complications that arise from the EAW that are just as significant and tie into what they were talking about. For example, an employer's ability to not hire someone without any reason not to hire them is often debated. And even more common to hear are disputes about an employer's ability not to hire someone or to fire someone for an "immoral" reason, such as the potential employee's sexual preference. While it is my own belief that, with respect to private businesses, these things should still be left up to the employer, I would have liked to see them addressed in this article, as they are quite relevant. In terms of the single element of the EAW that was addressed in this article, the authors argue that reason is a necessity of humans - whereas hypothetical robot employees could do without it. I do agree that people, unlike robots, can make good use of reasons. However, in the private sector that sort of correspondence should be strictly between the employee and employer rather than a matter of public policy. Just because people appreciate being given reasons for the termination of their employment does not mean the government needs to step in and force employers to do so. Finally, the last thing that irks me about this article is its conclusion. The last sentence states, "Convincing business of the moral necessity of due process, however, is a task yet to be completed." I feel that this sort of conclusion left too many questions unanswered, such as how to go about convincing the businesses and precisely what to do about this problem. I find it amusing that I am not the difficult-to-be-convinced business owner but, even after reading this article, I am still not convinced of the moral necessity of due process. But putting this simple amusement aside, I felt it should have been necessary for the authors to provide some sort of diagnosis as to what sort of actions their readers could take if they found themselves in agreement with Werhane and Radin throughout the majority of the article. Although I disagree with the overall position of Werhane and Radin, I agree that employers should treat their employees with respect, including giving reasons for firing them. Where my viewpoint differs is that I do not feel that this sort of respect needs to be protected legally in any way other than a contract between employee and employer. In this free market society, the government need not interfere - especially in the dealings of private businesses. Despite my opinion being different than that of the authors, I found the article very useful as a means to question and strengthen my own perspectives. Read More