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Blog Post#11 (Class 17) – Cheng Dong
March 26, 2015 | Leave a Comment
Class 17: Workers In Harm’s Way – The “Evil” Side of Large Companies.
While we focus on the issue of income inequality, the low income that worker receives is not nearly the only issue that they are having today. It is important that we should assist the low income workers raise their earnings to a reasonable level, but at the same time we can’t ignore the issue of their work’s effects on their lives and the fundamental respect we should have towards these hard working people. Taking a previously concept that I disagreed with from a former reading, “Income is not the only measurement of well-being”.
In our efforts to close the wage gap between the wealthy and the poor, there has been an overemphasis of efforts in raising the income for the poor. Now, I am not saying that it is not important that we do so, but there are other issues that must be addressed if we are seeking to close the income gap in the long term. The New York Times article by Jodi Kantor, addresses one of such issues, working hours. As we have discussed in prior readings, many workers, particularly in the restaurant industry, faces erratic scheduling of computer programs that maximizes the profit of the employers in expense of the lives of the employees. The reports focuses on how difficult the live is for the workers, but my concern lie more with their children. Education, among other things, is a great factor in determining one’s future income, and education starts very early. It is a proven trend that children with their parents spending more time with them, therefore passively passing knowledge to them, at a pre-school age tend to work better in school. In the case of the New York Times article, Mr. Navarro doesn’t seem to be able to afford the luxury of staying with her son, Gavin, due to the scheduling issue. That could lead to Gavin falling behind in school, and that effect could extend further down into his life and be a factor in causing him to become a low income worker as well. Sometimes it’s not only about the money, other issues must also take notice of our effort to solve the income inequality.
Asides from the need to close the income gap between different income groups, simple decencies towards other people should be addressed as well. In the business world there is a idea called corporate governance, while being a developing terms and given different meanings in different sectors of business it calls for a balance of interests among stakeholders of the company. Stockholders are only part of stakeholders, who consist of everyone who has a interest relationship with the company such as the employees, the customers, and even the community in which the company is in. While the company has an objective of earning more interests for their investors, that shouldn’t be done at the expense of the interests belonging to other stakeholders such as their employees. In the cases presented by Cohen Milstein, there is clearly an trend of exploiting the interest of workers to keep cost down at McDonalds. Not only is that trend illegal, it also causes ethical implications that can greatly harm the reputation of the company. Businesses shouldn’t only push for the interest of their shareholders, although that is their responsibility, as creating a situation in which everyone can profit from is the best way of doing businesses today.
Of course, there are also cases in which the workers may be overly exaggerating their working conditions in order to receive some sort of compensations. Taking the Amazon case from the Washington Post article as an example, the workers may not have spoke about the entire truth about the wait at the security line. However, if the charges are genuine, it is sure to cause the corporations a great deal of trouble since the losses are like to be much greater than paying back the workers for what they owe. For one thing, such negative news from the franchises is surely to affect investors’ confidence, resulting in shifting stock prices. Yet, the problem is that the articles failed to present past examples of issue such as this and how extensive the damage was. How did other similar cases affect the company in questions? What were some of the losses besides the compensation for wages towards the workers? With answers to these questions, the articles can set a example as to the seriousness of this issue past the small amount of wage that the workers were working for.
There is no mistake in attempting to increase the gain of the company, and decreasing cost is a very good tactic in achieving such objective. The issue is that businesses must also take ethical concerns into consideration as it would also affect their business operations. While in the short span, taking the ethical path may seem more difficult and less effective than disregarding ethics, the long term benefits of maintaining ethics in the company is surely to be greater.
