GROUP A: A newspaper columnist signs a contract with a newspaper chain. Several months later she is offered a position with another newspaper chain at a higher salary. Because she would prefer making more money, she notifies the first chain that she is breaking her contract. The courts will decide the legality of her action. But what of morality? Did the columnist behave ethically?
The employer and the employee sign an employment contract where they lay down the terms of the agreement. I believe that there is no connection between the employee’s morality and he or she leaving a job before the expiry date of the contract if the reasons for leaving are good enough especially if the working conditions are pathetic. However, the case of the newspaper columnist is different. The columnist is leaving in search of greener pastures in the same field. The society we live in is quite different and people can do what they feel convenient as long as nobody is hurt in the process. Therefore, morality is each person’s individual aspect meaning that whatever one individual thinks is right or wrong may be different for the others (Boylan, 2013)).
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The columnist is just doing what she feels is best for her without the intention of hurting or harming anyone. Consequently, there is not immorality in her actions. However, she should be ready to pay for the legal consequences for breaking the contract. On the other hand, I think her behavior is not ethical. In every organization, there are the standards of conduct that employees and employers must observe. Ethics refers to what is right or wrong (Boylan, 2013). Breach and fraud of contract or any other contract violation is unethical in many instances.
GROUP B: An office worker had a record of frequent absence. He used all his vacation and sick leave days and frequently requested additional leave without pay. His supervisor and co-workers expressed great frustration because his absenteeism caused bottlenecks in paper work, created low morale in the office, and required others to do his work in addition to their own. On the other hand, he felt he was entitled to take his earned time and additional time off without pay. Was he right?
Generally, employees are entitled to both paid and unpaid leaves as per the agreement between them and the employer. Employers offer paid time offs to employers as vacation days, sick leave, holidays and personal leaves. Therefore, I feel that the office worker had the right to take time off, including additional time off without pay. However, I believe that how he did it was a bit wrong. Notably, the employer did not consider what he was putting other employees through neither did he care about the workload in his office. He left his work for the coworkers not considering that they had their own loads to handle. Consequently, the other employees had to handle more work than they were required to do. This left them exhausted and unhappy with their colleague. If he was a good employee, he should have considered the work on his table and ensure that it is complete. Moreover, he should have ensured that there was someone to stand in for him during the time of his off. Similarly, he should have talked with the other workers and the supervisor to be sure that no one else was to take some time off before taking his extended vacation.
Therefore, his behavior was morally wrong since he did not consider the feelings of others. Additionally, the office worker’s behavior was unethical because he was avoiding his duties. Ethics requires that every employee attend to his or her duties without failure unless there are justifiable reasons for that. In this case, there were no good reasons for the employee to abscond duty. It is clear that his constant absenteeism would cost the company time and money. In this regard, the company can decide to terminate his employment.
According to Augustine, people can learn from life lessons. Therefore, I believe that Augustine would have done the same and fired the employee to learn from his mistakes. He also believes that people deserve punishment for their mistakes. On the other hand, Aquinas believes that people have the free will to choose what to do and therefore may have taken a different course of action.
Reference ;
Boylan, M. (2013). Business Ethics . Hoboken: Wiley. Print.
