Chapter Seven:

The Ethics of Job

Discrimination

Copyright © 2021 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
 Ethical Issues in the Workplace: The Current
Environment
-Ethics at work and in human resource management is about relationships with others
and with the company. Boss and employee relationship
-Companies who place employees at the core of their strategies produce higher long-
term returns to shareholders than their industry peers – more than double.
Perspectives on Workplace Relationships: There are two very distinct, and sometimes
competing, perspectives on the ethics of workplace relationships (utilitarian and
universalist)
i. UTILITARIAN: Employers might decide to treat employees well as a means to
produce greater workplace harmony, productivity, and innovation. Questions about
self interest of managers.
ii. UNIVERSALISM: the second perspective is that employers might treat employees
well out of a Kantian sense of duties and rights, regardless of the either utilitarian or
self-interested productivity consequences. This deontological approach emphasizes
the rights and duties of all employees, and treating employees well simply because
“it is the right thing to do.”
Defining the Parameters of the Employment Relationship
The employment relationship raises issues of power, obligation, responsibility, fair treatment,
and expectations. The livelihoods of both parties rely on each other’s contributions to the
relationship, so it is important that clear boundaries be established to maintain the
relationship. Legal requirements/laws cannot cover everything that happens in the
relationship. While legislators and the courts have addressed many aspects of the working
environment, countless ethical issues remain that these regulatory and judicial bodies have
left unresolved.
Among some of the ethical issues:
a.The Right of Due Process: is the right to be protected against the arbitrary(simply) use of
authority. In legal contexts, due process refers to the procedures that police and courts must
follow in exercising their authority over citizens. The state’s authority to punish citizens,
through police and courts, creates a safe and orderly society.
b.Employment at Will: Much employment law within the United States instead evolved
in a context of a legal doctrine known as employment at will. Employment at will (EAW)
holds that, absent a particular contractual or other legal obligation that specifies the
length or conditions of employment, all employees are employed “at will.”
Employers may dismiss their employees at will , for good cause, for no cause or even for
morally wrong causes, without thereby guilty of legal wrong.
An EAW worker may opt to leave a job at any time for any reason, without offering any
notice at all; so the freedom is theoretically mutual.

Supporters of EAW say:

• The employer owns the company and ownership gives him or her the right to decide
whether and how long an employee will work in his or her company.
• Businesses will operate most efficiently(utilitarianism) if employers have the freedom
to hire or fire employees as they see fit.
c. Downsizing.Terminating workers is not necessarily an unethical decision, but it raises
ethical questions since/especially when alternatives may be available to an organization
in financial difficulty.
Once the decision to downsize has been made, one must consider whether there are
ways an organization can act more ethically n fairly in the process.
Important factors to consider are respect, dignity, transparency, and consistency. For
instance, when a firm decides to downsize, it is critical to lessen the impact as much as
possible and to allow the terminated employees to depart with dignity. It is critical to be
honest and forthright and to be sensitive to the experiences of those who will be
affected. Job fair, skills training.
d.Health and Safety: Within the United States and throughout many other countries
with developed economies, there is a wide consensus that employees have a
fundamental right to a safe and healthy workplace.

-Health and safety have a very high instrumental value since part of their value derives
from the fact that we use them to attain other things of value. Ex. We need to be
healthy(instrument needed) so that we can make money(objective).
-Health and safety are also valuable in and of themselves. (intrinsic value). When we
are old, we it is good to be healthy(objective).
Health and Safety as Acceptable Risk: Employers cannot be responsible for
providing an ideally safe and healthy workplace. Instead, discussions in ethics
about employee health and safety will tend to focus on the relative risks
workers face and the level of acceptable workplace risk. “Risks” can be defined
as the probability of harm, and we determine the “relative risks” by comparing
the probabilities of harm involved in various activities.

A workplace is considered safe if the risks are acceptable. An “acceptable level

of risk” means that the probability of harm involved in a specific work activity is
equal to or less than the probability of harm of some more common activity.
 Establishing Fair Working Conditions
-Risks are sometimes unavoidable and acceptable, as long as employees are fully
compensated for taking risk and they do so freely and knowingly.
However, risks are not justified when
- wages are not proportional to the risks
- the risk is accepted unknowingly or out of desperation,
- -Are not justified when companies fail to collect information on risks and fail to
inform workers of risk.
- When less-risky jobs are unavailable, or when workers lack information about less-
risky alternatives.
When these things happen, the contract between employer and employee is not fair,
and is therefore unethical.

Therefore Employers should:

• Eliminate risks when cost is reasonable,
• Providing compensation for job risks similar to risk premiums paid in other jobs.
• Providing adequate medical and disability benefits and safety equipment
• Working with other firms to collect information about job risks. Inform risky info to
employees.
 Moral Responsibility for Working Conditions
• Employer is morally responsible for bad working conditions if the employer:
– Can and should improve conditions but didn’t. Has money to make safer but
didn’t do.
– Knows about the risky conditions but still didn’t improve it or inform workers
– Is not prevented from changing conditions. Nothing preventing employers
from making changes but still didn’t improve condition.
Who should ensure condition is safe? 2 thoughts
a.Health and Safety as Market Controlled: Perhaps the health and safety standards can be
left to the market.
Defenders of the free market and the classical model of corporate social responsibility
would favor individual bargaining between employers and employees as the approach to
workplace health and safety.
Whats happens when employees are desperate for jobs? Can they really bargain for safer
environment?

b. Government regulates: OSHA

THE ETHICS OF JOB DISCRIMINATION
-The root meaning of discrimination is to distinguish one object from another.
-Discrimination can be define as the wrongful act of distinguishing
illicitly/illegally among people not on the basis of individual merit, but on
the basis of prejudice or some invidious/unpleasant or morally
reprehensible/wrong attitude or stereotype. (race, gender, age
discrimination)
-The discrimination in employment must involve 3 elements.
*first, it is a decision against one or more employees/prospective employees
that is not based on individual merits(ability to perform job,) or other
morally legitimate qualifications.
*Second, the decision derives solely or in part from racial or sexual prejudice,
false stereotypes, or some other kind of morally unjustified attitude against
members of the class to which the employee belongs.
*Third, the decision has a harmful or negative impact on the interests of the
employees,(no job,no promotion or pay rise).
 Discrimination
Covert racial discrimination a form of racial discrimination that is disguised and subtle,
rather than public or obvious . Ex. Based on one's name. Researchers found that people
with Chinese-, Indian-, or Pakistani-sounding names were 28% less likely to get an
interview than candidates with precisely the same qualifications but with English-
sounding names.
Discrimination:Utility , Rights and Justice
-The arguments against discrimination generally fall into three groups.
1.Utility.
-The utilitarian arguments claim that discrimination leads to an inefficient use of human
resources. Different job will require different skills and attitudes in order for it to be carried
out productively. So if jobs are assigned to individuals on basis other than competency(such
as race,sex religion), productivity will decline.
2.Rights.
-rights arguments claim that discrimination violates human rights/basic moral rights. Each
individual has a moral right to be treated as free equal person to any other person, individuals
have moral duty to treat each individual as equal and free person.)
3.Justice.
-Justice arguments claim that discrimination results in an unjust distribution of society’s
benefits and burden.It violates the principles of justice.
 Discrimination and the Law
• Civil Rights Act of 1964
– made it illegal to base hiring, firing, or compensation
decisions on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin
– created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
(EEOC) to administer the Act
• Executive Order 11246
– required companies doing business with the federal
government to take steps to redress racial imbalance in
workforce
• Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972
– gave EEOC increased power to combat “under
representation” and to require affirmative action programs
 What is Affirmative Action?
+Any program designed to ensure that minorities, women, or members of some other
group, are adequately represented within an organization and its various levels by
taking positive steps to increase their number when underrepresented.
Ex. Top management/Education quota to help black people who might be
discriminated in the past like the black people in the US.

+What counts as “adequate representation” depends on the objectives of the program

Ex. some objective look at having the same proportion of women or minorities and
main race in the workforce.

+Affirmative action arises in the workplace in three ways:

a.Through legal requirements of Executive Order 11246 to ensure equal opportunity.
b.A court requirement of "judicial affirmative action" to remedy a finding of past
discrimination.
c.Voluntary affirmative action plans.
-Affirmative action programs have been attacked mainly on grounds that, in
attempting to correct the effects of past discrimination, these programs have
instituted a form of reverse discrimination against present male whites.
This violates justice by violating the principles of equality and equal
opportunity.

-The arguments to justify these programs/preferential treatments fall into two

groups:
*It is a form of compensation for the past injuries they suffered. Affirmative
action is a morally legitimate means for securing equal opportunity for all
especially those that were discriminated.
*It is an instrument for achieving certain social goals. Affirmative action is
supported under utilitarianism because the advantages that minority
groups reap from affirmative action outweigh the possible disadvantages
suffered both by the majority and minorities if AA is not carry out. Society
can only flourish if all members of the society have equally comfortable
life.
-However, the difficulty of defending the program based on the principle of
compensation is that the principles requires that compensation should come only from
those specific individuals who intentionally inflicted a wrong, and it requires them to
compensate only those specific individuals whom they wronged. Compensatory justice
does not require that compensation should come from all the members of the group that
contains some wrongdoer.

Basic Guidelines

After a number of legal opinions, employers are left with some basic guidelines for
creating affirmative action policies and programs. Among them are:

a.The affirmative action efforts or policy may not unnecessarily infringe on other
employees’ rights or create an absolute bar to their advancement (for example, it would
be inappropriate to discharge or layoff others in order to achieve a racial balance).

b.It may not change legitimate expectation of employees ( Cannot force the company to
hire unqualified minority to fulfill the quota).

c.It must be temporary, lasting only until it attains objective of the program.

Insert Photo Credit Here

 Sexual Harassment
-Sexual harassment is seen as unwelcome sexual advances, request for sexual
favors and other physical contact or verbal of sexual nature.
-Reject or acceptance the advances will have usually negative effect of the
victim’s employment, promotion and work performance. Ex. Don’t sleep with
me, no promotion.

-Company should highlight the seriousness of sexual harassment and have

guidelines to handle sexual harassment cases and made it known to all
employees.

• There are guidelines that prohibit “intimidating, hostile, or offensive working

environment” and “verbal or physical contact of a sexual nature” .
However, it is sometimes hard to distinguish this from male
rudeness not intended to degrade women.
 Diversity
• Refers to the presence of differing cultures, languages, ethnicities, races, affinity
orientations, genders, religious sects, abilities, social classes, ages, and national
origins of the individuals in a firm.
• When used in connection with the corporate environment, it often encompasses
the values of respect, tolerance, inclusion, and acceptance.
• Diversity has been found to lead to more enhanced innovation, employee
engagement, and stronger financial performance. A 2018 study found that, where
there is greater diversity in leadership teams and boards, they also reap these
financial benefits:
• 53% increase in return on equity (ROE) (where Fortune 500
companies have at least 3 female board members)
• Increase of 6% in their net profit margin (where companies have at
least 30% of executive roles filled by women)
 Diversity
Aside from the benefits of diversity, it can create conflicts.
• Tension and anxiety may emerge when bringing people together with
diverse differences. Different thoughts, way of doing work (last minute)
etc
• Another concern involves integrating diverse viewpoints with a preexisting
corporate culture. Sometimes not easy to change personal culture to
corporate culture.
• Be wary of prejudgments based solely on differences in interpretations of
culturally based standards. Stereotypes-labelling.

Efforts at multiculturalism, such as acknowledging and promoting diversity in the

workplace can serve to both educate and encourage diversity-related benefits.
The cost of ignoring diversity is high, in terms of lost productivity, but also
in terms of legal liability.
 Conclusions
• Valuing and managing a diverse work force is more
than ethically and morally correct. It’s also a business
necessity.
• Companies that fail to do an excellent job of
recruiting, retaining, developing and promoting
women and minorities simply will be unable to meet
their staffing needs.
 REFERENCES
Hartman, L. P., DesJardins, J., & MacDonald, C. (2021). Business
ethics. McGraw-Hill
Velasquez, M. G. (2018). Business ethics: Concepts and cases
(8th ed.). New York: Pearson.