The employment at will doctrine is such that, an employer can terminate an employee, at any time and for any cause, or no cause at all. Employment at will employees do not have an agreement and surety of continued employment, which is an issue of employee rights. There are several employee's right issues at workplaces; among which, one of the biggest issue of employees is their uncertainty towards their length of work employment. This leads to a lack of job security and an unsafe, and an unfair working environment for the employee. An employee should be able to enjoy basic employee rights. They should be able to participate and be informed about what is happening, in the workplace. Moreover, they should have the right to privacy, which they apparently don't. Employees should not be fired for reasons unrelated to their work. I will argue that this is not only professionally, but also morally wrong.
The stakeholders in this situation are the business owner, and the employee. Both the business owner and the employee can face challenges after the at-will firing. For an employee, the at-will firing can result in huge financial issues, increased stress level and loyalty issues. In the future, their loyalty towards any work they perform may diminish which can lead to poor performance at their workplace. On the other hand, by firing an employee, a business owner may face added costs because they will have to look for new employee, and may lose some potentially good employees who may be fired for the wrong reasons. However, if the employee is a poor performing employee, then the at-will employment can be advantageous for the employer because he can fire the employee whenever he deems it necessary. Employees have less bargaining power compa...
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...ompany. In the case, the employee definitely performs a morally wrong deed, and this deed may not seem acceptable from the employer and businesses’ point of view, but looking at it from the employee's point of view, there is nothing wrong in voicing out your opinion because everyone needs to enjoy the freedom of speech.
Furthermore, what I believe the best moral outcome for both stakeholders is firing the employee but in a respectable manner. Looking at this from a utilitarian approach I can say that the employee is definitely not happy working for the company. As a result, the employee does not provide a better outcome for the business and the society. So what would be best for the employer and the business is to fire the employee, however, what was wrong was the way the employer fired the employee without reason, without respect and without value of the employee.
...usly shamed, embarrassed, and demeaned their employees. I think this kind of behavior is a way of separating employers from employees. It helps keep employees in line and also adds the benefit of making employers feel good about themselves at the expense of their employees. Demeaning actions prevent employees from organizing or protesting for higher wages or better conditions. It keeps them “in their place” and does not allow them to hope or strive for anything better. In spite of the dehumanization of employees by employers, there are silent rebellions committed by lower class employees such as jokes, gossip, doing other's work, and just in general helping each other out. These are silent protests, they do not change the status quo in any way, that would be too risky for these employees. It is survival and caring in a corporate world that does not care about them.
“ They see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave”(Plato 1). This is from the article “ Allegory of the Cave” and there are oppressors in the story who are hiding the truth from the people who know nothing but what they are taught by them. In the film The Matrix, it shows a man named Neo who gets help from a man from the real world to help him escape. Neo finally sees the truth of the world he was living in and realize it was a lie and a illusion to him and the others who still don 't know the real world. He is being train to fight and go back and defeat the system of the machines who are controlling the people who are blinded. The Matrix parallels Plato “Allegory of the
...gree and believe that they could get real results if everyone would consistently apply the company’s principles. I have learned personally in the business world consistency means a lot, all employees should have the same consequences. By letting go employees, managers and executives shows that the rules apply to all levels. It will cause everyone involved to have more respect for the company even if they don’t agree with the decision.
I hail from Ukraine, the country that is still not a member of the European Union, nevertheless is definitely a European country. Therefore, I have always been interested in the EU laws, policies, priorities, regulations and so on to contrast Ukrainian reality with that of the EU states. Now I live and study in the country I have always had an innate and subconscious love to – the USA, the country known as the country of big opportunities. As the result, I became increasingly interested in the US laws and regulations, in particular employment and labor laws. To combine these two passions I decided to prepare a paper that compares the US and EU labor and employment laws.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze a specific, hypothetical employment situation encountered and to include the information regarding employment conflicts, questions, grievances, lawsuits, etc., in terms of how the situation was handled or resolved. Employment conflicts are a constant issue everyday in any organization; it is how you handle them both legally and professionally that counts.
Utilitarian theory says that an action is fair if it brings happiness to the greater number of people. In this scenario firing Joe is bringing happiness to neither Joe nor the company as he had been a loyal employee for 5 years and worked his way up to the managerial position. Thus, firing Joe isn’t justified by this theory.
The ethical issue in this situation is the willingness of the company’s director to prevent the employees from organizing in union. Among others, the company’s director try to use unfair tactic like diversion, intimidation, manipulation, termination of job contract and threat to shut down the company leading to massive loss of job. In an ethical standpoint, these tactics are wrong.
As a recently hired Chief Operating Officer (COO) in a midsize company, multiple personal problems are quickly discovered that require immediate attention. As an astute manager, there is a need to analyze the employment-at-will doctrine and determine if there are any exceptions and liabilities before taking any action. In addition to the personal problems, it is discovered that the company has a no whistleblower policy. By the end of this paper, you will be able to review a summary of the employment at will doctrine, review scenarios of the personal problems of the company and determine if the employee could be legally fired, get an overview of ethical theories, identify whether or not the company should adopt a whistleblower policy, and review justifications of at least three (3) fundamental items that should be included in a whistleblower policy.
The decision to terminate an employee may be difficult for some managers depending on the situation at hand. Today, many states have adopted the employment at will law to fire employees for any or no reason, with the exception of employees that have a contract in place. According to Erickson (2008), “The basis for an employer to terminate an employee without being sued is the employment-at-will doctrine. This doctrine is a statement that is signed by both the employee and employer at the time of hire that states that the employee can quit at any time for any reason without notice and that the employer can terminate the employee at any time for any legal reason.” On the contrary to the definition of “At-Will” employment, Pozgar (2012) states, “The employment-at-will common law doctrine is not truly applicable in today’s society and many courts have recognized this fact. The twentieth century has witnessed significant changes in socio-economic values that have led to reassessment of the common law rule (p. 494). An example of an organization hiring on an employment on an at-will basis but terminating an employee without justifying the cause of action was the case of Joseph Casias versus Corporation. By law, an employer has to follow guidelines that essentially make ethos rules null and void because there is nothing to adhere to, especially in a circumstance where the employee is terminated by the at-will policy. In this situation, if the employer terminated by allegations that this employee was an active drug user. However, by law, according to Mr. Casias and his attorney, this employee had legitimate reasons for being involved in obtaining and smoking marijuana. As discussed in the case, the law protect employees from illegitimate...
An employer may dismiss an employee for a fair reason - this means the dismissal is substantively fair and if the employer has followed a fair procedure - the dismissal is procedurally fair.
An organizational human resources department utilizes the hiring and firing process to meet the organization’s personnel needs. Organizational human resource departments are charged with the oversight of an organizations administration department. The practice of hiring and firing people is a process employer’s conducts on a daily basis. This process has to be done in a proper manner and not in haste. The implication that can occur from the improper hiring and firing process could and can have a positive or negative impact on an organization. Therefore, employers must carefully evaluate their decision to hire/fire individuals and its impact on the organizations’ workplace environment and others employees. Human Resource Management is important for an effective organization. In today’s organization, HRM is valuable to the organization because of increase legal complexities and its known for improvement in productivity. However, management should realize that poor human resource management could result in an outburst of hiring process followed by firing or layoffs. According to (Satterlee 2013, p. 194), “Hiring the best candidate who is also a good fit for the organization is crucial for the success of an organization, because a poor hiring decision will have repercussions across the entire organization”. Satterlee made a valid point because poor hiring could have an impact on the bottom line performance of the firm. In other words, HRM is the contributing factor to the success of the organization including motivating and maintain the staffs. The purpose to the motivation is to ensure that all employees grow to a full potential. According to (Sims 2006, p. 5), “HRM efforts are planned, systematic approaches to increasing organizati...
The doctrine of employment at-will provides that employers may hire, transfer, promote, or terminate employees at any time for any cause, and employees have the right to resign at any time with or without notice (Reed & Bogardus, 2012)....
From the beginning, the film is filled with controversial decisions. First, the firm that is depicted in this film decides to lay off most of the employees in the firm leaving only 20% of the workers. However, the firm’s managers do not lay off the workers personally but hire another firm to do this. Without prior warning, the mass layoff takes place in a rather insensitive manner with employees expected to leave immediately. First, the decision by the company to lay off the people without warning is a questionable decision. Though they are offered a severance package, the employees are traumatized by the lay off. Having reported to work just like a normal day, none of the employees expect that they are going to lose their jobs on this particular day. Therefore, it is a surprise when the hired human resource team comes in and explains to the employees that they no long...
Employee turnover in organization is one of the main issues that extensively affect the overall performance of a workplace (Tariq, Ramzan and Riaz, 2013). Various studies show that employee turnover negatively affect the overall efficiency at the organization (Tariq, Ramzan and Riaz, 2013). Xiancheng, (2013) mentioned the employee turnover is a method of personal issues who decided to stop associate with the company for better advantage. There are two types of turnover which are voluntary and involuntary turnover. Voluntary turnover can be defined as the termination of the official and the psychological contract between the employee and employer (Krausz, 2002; Macdonald, 1999; Mclean Parks et al, 1999; Rousseau, 1995) while involuntary turnover inescapably lead to direct negative results such as current job is insecurity, work difficulty, and status fluctuation (Gowan and Gatewood, 1997). However, other researchers such as Haven-Tang and Jones, (2012) concluded poor management, lack of salary, bad working environment and paucity of job opportunities could be the highest causes of turnover among organization. This statement was support by Kusluvan et al., (2010) where is they had stated that poor management, low payment of salary, work environment and lack of employees’ job opportunities on the organization will make employee want to quit from their job. Turnover intention situation will appear when labour had feeling that they want to quit from current job, so voluntary and involuntary turnover will become final stage for them as their decision (AlBattat and Mat Som, 2013) but it is different for researchers such as Mosadeghrad, Ferlie and Rosbenberg (2013) when they conclude that employee turno...
In management, effective leadership involves the daily responsibilities of monitoring employee productivity, dealing with customers and handling the technical aspects of business. Being a manager can be fun, rewarding and socially interesting. A good manager is positive and provides support and motivation for employees. However, one of the responsibilities of a manager, along with hiring, is firing. It is commonly accepted that “employment termination is usually excruciating for everyone involved” (Zins). However, by using a structured method this process can go smoothly and with as little stress as possible.