It's the right for any employee to be provided with a comfortable and conducive working environment. However, in the case of Ms. Robinson, the things that the other employees did to her made her feel uncomfortable and she was not free to perform her work like her male colleagues. A reasonable person would consider what Ms. Robinson went through at Jacksonville Shipyards as a hostile working environment because she was treated harshly by her colleagues. The situation worsened when the trailer's door was painted with the sign "men only" meaning women were not allowed to go in there and so was Ms. Robinson. The offensive pictures shared by the male workers crossed the line to be sexual harassment when Ms. Robinson was given a pornographic photo that had a nude woman who had a long blond hair and was holding a whip (Boatright & Smith, 2017). She also had long blond hair and used a whip as one of the welding tools thus the photo given to her was a suggestion that she can be like that woman in the picture.
According to Kant, this harassment is unethical because the actions performed by the employees were not good even though the company didn't have a problem with it. The actions themselves are not acceptable according to human law. According to utilitarian, these actions are harassment because of the results (Boatright & Smith 2017). Whatever the male workers did had negative impacts on Ms. Robinson thus this was unethical. A follower of virtue ethics would argue that these men or even the company did not teach its employees on ethical values that were supposed to guide individuals on how they treat each other. In my opinion, one instance of harassing behavior is enough for a hostile working environment claim because a good working environment advocates for zero harassment.
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In the case of Walmart, it was wrong to allow the store managers to use their own discretion when hiring and promoting because this is likely to result in unfairness and discrimination (Boatright & Smith 2017). There should be rules applied when hiring and promoting. On the other hand, this was good because the managers know the people who best suit the promotion positions as well as the requirements needed when hiring new employees. I disagree with the company’s claim that it was not responsible for the discrimination because ass a company, the management should inculcate the best values and ethics to ensure fairness amongst the employees.
Reference
Boatright, J. R., & Smith, J. D. (2017). Ethics and the conduct of business.
