From: GA.JRG@forsythe.stanford.edu (June Genis)
Subject: Re: Employee vs. Employer rights (was Re: What keeps me from being Lib.)
Organization: Stanford University, California, USA
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 18:03:39 GMT

In article <1992Apr10.152445.8551@m.cs.uiuc.edu>,
kadie@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie) writes:
>
>Should it be legal or illegal for an employer to fire an employee because ...
> [list omitted]
>If I understand the position of the LP (I'm sure someone will correct
>me if I'm wrong), because an employee and employer are free agents,
>none of these actions should be illegal. If an employee doesn't like
>an employer's work conditions, he or she is free to find work
>elsewhere.

Carl, when you're talking about "firing" someone it means they
have already been hired and there is a presumptive employment
contract in place.  If the employer did not make it clear when
hiring the person the things you cite were grounds for dismissal
then the person being fired certainly would appear to have grounds
for a breach of contract suit.

If what you really mean is "should an employer be able to specify
that any of these thing are grounds for dismissal"  I think the
libertarian answer would have to be yes even if we found the reasons
objectionable.  Not all nasty things that people can do to each
other constitute rights violations.  Libertarians believe that
government should be limited to the area of protecting rights.  That
doesn't mean that other social structures aren't needed for dealing
with other problems of the human condition.  We just feel that these
have to be done with out the use legalized initiatory force, which
is really the only characteristic that separates a government from
a voluntary organization trying to do good.

>The status quo position is that most employment is "at will" with
>exceptions. So, an employee can be fired for almost any reason or no
>reason but not for sex, race, religion, union status. These exceptions
>were developed over time in response to problems. They are justified
>by "public policy goals" and the observation that employers are
>generally in a stronger position that employees (especially if
>employees can be fired for union activity and employers are allowed to
>have blacklists.)

Employers are only at an advantage if there is an infinite supply of
replaceable labor.  Without a labor supply the employer doesn't
make any money either.  This is the whole idea behind unions -- in
numbers there is strength.  Unfortunately the intervention of
government into unionism, first to attempt to prevent it then to
institutionalize it has severely corrupted the process.

There is also economics.  If an employer creates job criteria which
do not really impact on the ability of the worker to do the job,
that employer is artificially limiting the labor pool which will
drive up the price of that labor.  A competitor thus knows that by
ignoring the criteria they can obtain a worker who is every bit as
good at a lower cost thus making their enterprise more competitive.
Ad to this the social pressure of such things as boycotts and you
have some very effective weapons to deal with job discrimination --
unless the government butts in, of course.

The reason that discrimination was able to endure in the south is
that it was institutionalized thru the Jim Crow laws.  An employer
who realized that it made economic sense to employ or serve blacks
found that it wasn't legally possible to do this.  We're starting to
see a new form of Jim Cow laws now where the government is bringing
pressure on companies to do drug testing of all employees even
though it can be shown that such tests do not relate directly to job
performance.  The libertarian approach is to stop this interference
rather than either require or forbidding the employer to do such
testing.

>In most states today, if you don't belong to a union, don't work for
>the government, and don't have an employment contract, you can still
>be fired for a letter to the editor criticizing President Bush or for
>being a registered Republican. Groups like the ACLU advocate dumping
>fire-at-will for fire-with-cause. At least one state, Montana, has
>done this. Other states seem to moving in this direction. (Others are
>not).

This may be true at small companies where the employment contracts
are almost nonexistent, but most small companies are exempted from
compliance laws anyway.  I doubt a major company could get away with
it.  Even Stanford had to come up with an incredible rationalization
to get rid of Stuart Reges and they were only able to do so because
they were trying to rationalize what the government wanted them to
do.  They never really wanted to fire him and they eventually did
decide that they owed him another year's severance pay, and
acknowledgement that it was Stanford that broke the employment
contract.

>If you believe in the status quo (fire-and-will with exceptions) or
>"employee rights", then you do not agree with the LP.

But if you believe that it is an issue of individual responsibility,
rather than government responsibility to change the status quo then
you do agree with the LP.

>- Carl

/June
Xref: sparky talk.politics.misc:18505 misc.legal:9382