js_africanus

Suppose I am your employer and that I find out that you not only have position X on abortion, but that you donate money and work to advocate position X. Would firing you for that be an acceptable act? I would imagine that many people would feel that it was not an acceptable* reason for termination--hiring & firing should depend on your ability to do the job, be a team player, etc.

Now, if the situation were that I am your employer at Global Omni Corp., then clearly I am the business and you are the employee. If I'm a book keeper and you are my sole assistant, clearly the same applies, no? It would be immoral for me to fire you just because I disagree with your politics.

Suppose instead that you are my house keeper. Now you are the business and I am the customer. Would that make it okay* for me to terminate our business relationship because of your stance on abortion? Or because you have position Y on gay marriage, or position Z on affirmative action? I'd have to say no. To make your political views the reason for no longer utilizing your vacuuming & tub cleaning services seems to be identical to the book keeper/assistant scenario. I see no reason why the customer/business relationship in this case should be more privelidged (sp?) than the business/employee relationship.

But if it is immoral for me to sever our economic relationship when you are the sole member of your business, would it be okay if you had one employee? Wouldn't my decision to terminate by just as arbitrary and unfair? And if it is unfair when you have one employee, how about if you have two? Or ten? Or 100?

At what point does it become acceptable for a customer to stop doing business with a firm simply because of the firm's politics? Why is that point where it is? Why does the change from immoral to moral? Or is it really moral for me to terminate your house keeping services for your politics when it would be immoral for me to terminate you employment as my assistant book keeper for your politics?

Why aren't boycotts immoral?





*Please don't get into the business of confusing what's legal with what's moral. I'm asking about moral behavior, not legal behavior.

Furby

When a company opens itself up for business, it implicitly accepts the free market concept that “the consumer is king”. Thus, the consumer has the right to arbitrarily change his preferences or refuse to buy goods from the company. It is the job of the company to keep the consumer interested in its products/services, no matter what it takes.
It would not be immoral for the consumer to not buy goods from a store simply on the grounds that he does not like the décor of the store.

A company, which agrees to sign on an individual as an employee, is under the obligation to keep the individual for the contracted period of time, unless the employee performs actions that are detrimental to the interests of the company. It is not justified in firing the employee for any other reason, as in the case that it is not justified for replacing the employee with another who can outperform him and is willing to work for a lower salary.

Silent Acorns

I basically agree with Furby.

The important distinction is that the employer has a contractual obligation (i.e. a "promise") to continue to pay the employee for services rendered. The typical consumer has not signed any contract, and therefore is not obligated to continue the relationship for any reason. If they have signed a contract to purchase ____ for 3 more years, then the consumer is in an ethical dilemma, and the appropriate decision gets complicated and case specific.

In a nutshell though, your analogy doesn't hold because an employer makes a promise and the consumer does not.

Alonzo Fyfe

I don't agree with this. My wife makes and sells jewelry. There is no promise, explicit or implicit, that the customer is king. The only thing implicit or explicit in this fact is, "If you can offer me something more valuable to me than this necklace I built, then you get the necklace, and I get what you are offering."

The customer comes to the deal on an equal footing -- saying, "if you can offer me something more valuable to me than this money I have in my account, than you get the money and I get whatever of value you are offering."

My wife has donated some of her jewelry to charity, where the 'thing of value" is not cash, but the realization of something else she values. What is cash anyway, except the means of obtaining something else of value?

Nowhere, in this, is there any promise, explicit or implicit, that the customer has a right to come to the bargaining table as anything other than an equal to my wife, who wishes to work out a mutually beneficial arrangement that both parties can voluntarily agree to, given their different interests, values, needs, and situations.

js_africanus

A store of value and a numeraire.

More seriously, I don't see why it is that when I consume house cleaning from a house keeper, I have made no (implicit?) contract; whereas, if I take on help in my book keeping, I am making an (implicit) contract. Why is booting my house keeper for his politics moral, whereas booting my assistant for her politics is immoral?

(Plus every job I've ever had said explicitly on the application that there was no contract to employ me for any period of time.)

Silent Acorns

If a contract has any worth, it includes the grounds for canceling the contract. Either explicitly it implicitly (by being subject to the laws of the land). Unless the contract includes something like "the employer retains the right to end the contract if the employer ever discovers that the employee suports position X", the employer can't fire the employee without breaking his promise.

I also don't get the book/housekeeper analogy. If there is no contract then there is no promise. If I'm a contractor who hires a day worker, I can't morally fire him without pay because I find out at lunch that he hates gays. I can throw him off the site, but I still have to pay him for the full day because he didn't fail to live up to his side of the bargain. The next day, however, I'm under no obligation to hire him again.

Finally, I know you want to keep the "legal" arguments out but because the moral issue here deals with promises in the form of a legal contract, this is impossible. Implicit in any promise in the form of a legal contract is the legal system in which that contract is made.

Alonzo Fyfe

Perhaps you are asking the wrong question.

"Is it really wrong to fire an employee for their beliefs?"

Furby

I was arguing more from an economics standpoint that a company is out to maximise profits, as such the company has to try its best to pander to the consumer's needs.

Of course, if a store owner feels that there are more important things (such as political views) than profits, then he is free to refuse to serve a customer. Of course, he cannot then object if a customer refuses to patronise his store for the same reasons.

lisarea

Corporations are not sentient beings, though. They have no morals. They have no political views. (I know, I know, but we're not talking legal status, right?)

I have no beef with the personal beliefs and actions of corporate officers that would necessarily cause me to boycott the corporations they work for.

So, I would not boycott Acme Widgets and Industrial Bongo Pallettes because the CEO donated part of his salary to an organization that I disagree with. IF, however, AWIBP is donating some portion of their profits or somesuch to the same disagreeable organization, I would feel justified in boycotting their products and services.

Creating that corporate association with an issue or philosophy invites such things. In fact, most associations of this type are designed specifically to invite positive reactions. Take, for example, the trend of using Christian fish in business identification. The owners of those businesses are projecting their own personal belief systems onto their companies, largely in hopes of attracting the like-minded. Well, it's a two-way street, whether they like it or not, and as such, I avoid those businesses when it's reasonable to do so.

I do this for two reasons:

First, because I want to counteract the pointless positive effects of the practice. I like to do what little I can to keep the traffic going both ways, as it were.

Second, I think it's a sick, xenophobic practice designed to foster intolerance, and I don't generally support corporations that pretend to represent some kind of unrelated philosophical or ideological ideal. (I differentiate this from occasionally making purchases from non-profit organizations primarily as a means to support and/or show support for the organization.)

xorbie

I personally don't think it is immoral at all to fire an employee if they have beliefs that you are opposed to. It may be illegal, but not immoral. If I think my employee is a nazi and gives a sizeable portsion of his wage to some militant right wing group, I have every moral right (maybe even obligation) to fire his ass.