ethic

Read the uploaded file and answer the following question:

1. Do you agree or disagree with the actions of the employers in these cases? Why?

2. The Damore case could be read as a conflict between the right of free speech and the right to equal opportunity and freedom from harassment. How do you think a conflict between these rights should be resolved?

3. Google claimed that they were dismissing Damore for what he said because of ethical considerations such as equal opportunity. Akima seems to have dismissed Briskman because her speech threatened the financial well-being of the firm. How do you compare these differing rationales for restricting employee speech?
4. Change the specific conditions of each case. Imagine that Damore argued that because men are more aggressive and less sociable, they should not be placed in positions of authority and responsibility. Imagine Akima did not do business with the government but fired Briskman simply because they disagreed with her political stance. Would these changes make your evaluation of these cases different? Why or why not? 

6.1 INTRODUCTION: EMPLOYEE RIGHTS The James Damore and Julie Briskman cases described earlier were not the only high-profile cases in which employees were adversely affected at work because of the political nature of something they said or did. During the fall of 2017, following deadly protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, a person identified as a white nationalist who had participated in the protests was fired from his job. During 2016 and 2017, a number of professional athletes in the National Football League demonstrated their concern with racial injustice by refusing to stand for the national anthem. At least one player, quarterback Colin Kaepernick, was unable to find a team willing to hire him after his protests. All of these cases involve situations in which people lost their job, or were unable to find a job, because they were outspoken in their political speech. Chapter 5 reviewed some of the many values that work holds for people. Even for those who disparage it, work is valued as a necessary means to other crucial goals. Simply put, work is one of the most important and highly valued human activities in large part because it is necessary for so many other central human goods. But just as work is inescapable for most people, it is as likely to be something controlled by others. This fact highlights a real vulnerability: While the overwhelming majority of people need to work, other people typically determine most aspects of our work, including whether we work at all. As we discussed in chapter 2, the idea of moral rights is relevant in just those circumstances when important human interests are jeopardized by the actions of others. So, for example, the question of employee rights to free speech is raised when someone’s job is at risk because he or she has expressed a political opinion. This chapter will examine a range of potential moral rights in the workplace. As an initial step, let us clarify the meaning of moral rights in the workplace, or employee rights, that we will be using in this chapter. Three senses of employee rights are common in business. First, there are those legal rights granted to employees on the basis of legislation or judicial rulings. Thus, employees have a right to a minimum wage, to equal opportunity, to bargain collectively as part of a union, to a workplace that is free from sexual harassment, and so forth. Second, employee rights might refer to those goods that employees are entitled to on the basis of 115 contractual agreements with employers. In the sense of a contractual right, a particular employee might have a right to a specific health care package, paid holidays, pension funds, and the like. Finally, employee rights might refer to those entitlements to which employees have a claim independent of any particular legal or contractual factors. Such rights would originate with the respect owed to them as human beings. While both legal and contractual rights will be relevant for our discussions in this chapter, our primary focus will be on the understanding of employee rights as moral rights that are independent of both legal and contractual acknowledgment. To expand on this understanding, consider how legal and contractual rights interact. In general, both parties to an employment agreement bargain over the terms and conditions of work. Employers offer certain wages, benefits, and working conditions and in return seek worker productivity. Employees offer skills and abilities and seek wages and benefits in return. However, certain items are legally exempt from such negotiation. An employer cannot make a willingness to submit to sexual harassment or acceptance of a wage below the minimum established by law a part of the employment agreement. In effect, legal rights remove certain goods from the employment contract. Such legal rights set the basic legal framework in which business operates. They are, in this sense, part of the price of doing business. Employee rights as understood in this chapter, like minimum wage and protection against sexual harassment, lie outside of the bargaining that occurs between employers and employees. Unlike minimum wage, moral rights are justified by moral, rather than legal, considerations. We will understand employee rights as those goods that employees are entitled to (or protection from certain harms that they are entitled to) within the workplace. They establish the basic ethical framework for employer–employee relations. To the degree that there are such rights, employees cannot be asked to forgo these goods to get a job or to gain an increase in employment benefits. Employee rights function to prevent employees from being placed in what would be a fundamentally coercive position of having to choose between these basic moral goods and their job.1 Again, to use the examples from the discussion case, if an employee had a right to freedom of expression, then an employer could not deny someone his or her job on the basis of his or her political expression. Thus, the moral rights examined in this chapter fit within the liberal model of work introduced in chapter 5. While many conditions of work are open to negotiation between employers and employees (thus respecting the liberty of each), some fundamental constraints on that negotiation are necessary to ensure that employees are not put in the fundamentally coercive position of having to choose between important human goods (e.g., health, safety, privacy, free speech) and their job. The goods protected by such constraints fall within a traditional liberal understanding of freedom, equality, and autonomy.

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