Employees and Ethics
What are certain changes in the nature of work?
- Digital technologies allow firms for a quick scale up or down and blur the boundaries of firms, as evident in the rise of platform marketplaces.
- Technology and automation have also changed the skill requirements for employment.
- Technology is replacing some jobs, but also creates new ones.
- The ‘generation X’ is replaced by the ‘generation Y’, and the ‘generation Z’. These new generations present challenges of their own for managements and organizations.
- Technology has also transformed where we live and work.
What do telework, platform work, and the social contract mean?
Telework is any type of work arrangement where employees work remotely, away from an employer’s premises or fixed location, using digital technologies such as networks, laptops, mobile phones, and the internet.
Platform work is an employment form in which organisations or individuals use an online platform to access other organisations or individuals to solve specific problems or to provide specific services in exchange for payment.
Social contract is a reciprocal understanding that characterizes the relationship between business and society.
What is the changing social contract between employers and employees?
Old social contract:
- Job security; long, stable career and employment relationship
- Lifetime careers with one employer
- Stable positions/job assignments
- Loyalty to employer; identification
- Paternalism; family-type relationships
- Employee sense of entitlement
- Stable, rising income
- Job-related skill training
- Focus on individual job accomplishments
- Personal face-to-face communication
New social contract:
- Few tenure arrangements; job constantly “at risk”; employment as long as you “add value” to the organization
- Fewer life careers; changing employer common; careers more dynamic
- Temporary project assignments
- Loyalty to self and profession; diminished identification with employer
- Relationship far less warm and familial; no more parent-child relationships
- Personal responsibility for one’s own career/job future
- Pay that reflects contributions; pay for “value added”
- Learning opportunities; employees in charge of their own education and updating
- Focus on team building and projects
- Communication through technologies
When the International Labour Organization (ILO) created?
The International Labour Organisation (ILO), created in 1919 as part of the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I.
What does the global framework agreement mean?
Global framework agreement is an instrument negotiated between a multinational company and a global trade union in order to establish the same working rules based on international labour standards developed through the ILO.
How many main responsibilities do employees have?
There are two main responsibilities of employees; duty to work, and duty of loyalty and whistleblowing.
How many responsibilities do employers have toward their employees?
Employers also have responsibilities towards their employees. These are the duty of wage payment, the duty to protect the employee, and the duty to equal treatment.
What dimensions do fair wages have?
- Wages must be paid regularly and in full,
- They must comply with minimum wage and at least correspond to the living wage,
- They should not require excessive working hours,
- They must lead to a balanced wage structure; free of discrimination, and take into account different levels of education, skills and professional experience, and
- They should reward individual and collective performance.
What does cyber-bullying mean?
Cyber-bullying is an aggressive, intentional act carried out by a group or individual using electronic forms of contact repeatedly and over time against a victim who cannot easily defend him or herself.
What are the most problematic issues challenging employee privacy?
Particularly, the protection of personal data (informational privacy) and monitoring (physical privacy) are the most problematic issues challenging employee privacy.
For what purposes do employers collect personal data of job applicants and employees?
Employers collect personal data of job applicants and employees for a number of purposes, e.g. to comply with law, to assist in selection for employment, training and promotion,to ensure personal safety, personal security, quality control, customer service and the protection of property.
What does discrimination at work mean?
Discrimination at work is a differential and less favourable treatment of certain individuals because of any of characteristics, such as race, colour, sex, political opinion, disability, age, trade union membership, regardless of their ability to fulfil the requirements of the job
What does affirmative action or positive discrimination mean?
Affirmative action (positive discrimination) improves the opportunities of defined minority or disadvantaged groups, often treated unfairly within a society to give them equal access to that of the majority population.
What are valid reasons to dismiss an employee?
Thus, decrease in employee’s productivity, performance and concentration, poor or insufficient manner in spite of warnings, frequent late attendances in the office, long telephone calls, gossiping, cyberloafing, economic crisis, applying new technologies or new working methods, downsizing, decline in sales, orders and demand could be accepted as valid reasons to dismiss an employee.
What does job security mean?
Job security protects employees from unjust and unfair termination by employers.
What does the social selection criterion mean?
When an employer decides to dismiss some employees for operational reasons, such as down- sizing or economic crisis, the decision of whom to dismiss must be based on social selection criterion. In accordance with this principle, which has a common use particularly in Germany, the employee selected is the one for whom dismissal will have the least effect. In the selection procedure, the social circumstances (such as age, continuous length of service in the establishment, number of dependants, disability and state of health) of all comparable employees are weighed against each other in detail.
Social selection criterion is based on the principle that the socially weaker employee is protected and a socially stronger employee is dismissed.
How many levels do operational employee participation have?
- Decision participation (Co-determination)
- Administrative participation
- Consultative participation
- Informative participation
What are fundamental union rights?
Trade unions delegate the employees at workplaces and provide administrative employee participation via collective bargaining. There are three fundamental and complimentary union rights: the right to associate, the right to collective bargaining and the right to go on a strike (Figure 4.8). These rights are vital for workplace democracy and participation.
What does positive union freedom mean?
Positive union freedom means the freedom of workers and employers to form and join unions and confederations of their own choosing.
What does strike mean?
Strike means any concerted cessation by employees of their work with the object of halting the activities of a given establishment or of paralysing such activities to a considerable extent, or any abandonment by employees of their work in accordance with a decision taken to that effect by an organisation.