Equity is a key issue in the workplace. When employees feel they are not being treated fairly, employee satisfaction, engagement, and productivity are negatively affected. As a result, workers are more likely to leave the organization, seek unionization, or create conflict. Aside from how fairness negatively affects employers, fairness also detracts from many of the basic rights that employees have by virtue of their status as rational beings. Fairness is at the heart of the social contract, which is a philosophical construct that describes the nature of the relationship between employee and employer. While the social contract in the world of work is dynamically changing due to globalization and technological developments, the moral foundation of workers' rights remains grounded in ethical theories of justice. While U.S. labor law is still heavily based on at-will employment, we will see the limits of at-will employment as it pertains to justice and the new social contract that exists between employees and employers. Having identified these limitations, we will chart a new way forward that respects both the needs of employers to be competitive and the needs of employees to have their rights respected by those employers. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Rights are a “moral claim” – specifically, this means that one's right not to be harmed is interpreted as a moral duty on others not to do harm. Similarly, a worker's right not to be harmed extends to the employer's duty not to provide him with an unsafe working environment (which is not a duty owed to the general public). John R. Rowan describes the moral foundation of rights as the fact that employees are people, and the morally significant quality of people is that they have goals and interests (356). From this foundation, Rowan ascribes rights to liberty, well-being, and equality that extend to the right to fair wages, safe working conditions, due process, and privacy. The impetus for the recognition of such rights is the inferior bargaining position that employees have compared to employers. Describing employee rights in this way is distinct from a consequentialist perspective, which treats the question of rights in terms of whether they enhance or diminish overall well-being. be of society. The question of workers' rights is not a question of what will improve the utility of the greatest number of workers in society. In the recent example of Target's announced reduction, Governor Dayton asked for more details on the company's plans for the public interest (Bokios). At issue is rather what is fair and equitable for the employees involved in a given situation. It is inherently dangerous to guide public justice with utilitarianism when “there is no person who is in principle outside the reach of utilitarian sacrifice” (Frey 9). Economic analysis has shown that steadily advancing workers' rights in the United States through the application of exceptions to at-will employment, much as occurs in Europe, would reduce total factor productivity and labor flows (Verkerke 448). However, respect for workers' rights as a central element of the employee-employer social contract is much more important based on an ethical vision thatgives intrinsic priority to the rights of employees from the fact that they are rational beings. A premise here is that society cannot allow the economic power of the employer to dominate individual workers. Justice in the broadest sense requires a balancing of scales to weigh both groups of interests equally. The public is more likely to side with employees, but employee rights also depend on employers remaining competitive in the marketplace. Therefore, what is needed is a mechanism to protect employees' rights that does more than just take away employers' freedom and ability to sell products and services. Human Resources (HR) is the best mechanism to adopt or maintain (depending on its historical role in an organization) the employee advocate function as part of its overall responsibility as a strategic business partner in capital management and improvement human of the organization. of employing human resources as an employee advocate is not necessarily in conflict with the social contract of employment, but in some sense it is in conflict with the tradition of at-will employment. At-will employment is the concept that a worker can be fired without any just cause or warning. This view is common in the employee handbooks of most employers. The tradition has its roots in 19th-century common law and was upheld by the courts as a concerted effort to prevent government regulation of labor markets as part of a laissez-faire political philosophy that was dominant within the legal system until the mid-19th century. 20th century (Moskowitz 66). At that time, the first exception to at-will employment – ​​a public policy exception – was codified into California state law with Peterman v. Int'l Bhd. of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen, & Helpers of Am., Local 396 (1959). However, already in the work of Lawrence Blade in 1967 it was recognized that "in practice, the prospects for any kind of general legislative reform in this area are weak... suffice it to say that general legal limitations on the employer's right to dismiss are unlikely to succeed be implemented until there is a strong lobby to promote them” (1434). Furthermore, since the 1960s, the social contract between employees and employers has changed in recognizable ways and without major adjustments to at-will employment such as general guidelines for how to manage the workforce. While federal laws have outlined restrictions on will based on protected classes, and some states have recognized public policy, implied contracts, and good faith exceptions, we have yet to recognize the inequality of bargaining power between employees and employers. Inequality is due primarily to (a) declining legal and regulatory support for unions and increased foreign competition and technological change that has made long-term employment more expensive for employers (Bidwell). As a result of these trends, workers are in a weak position to argue that their moral claims should be respected, which draws attention to the importance of human resources in filling this gap. I have seen this imbalance play out in the real life of an organization. An employee named Mike was fired for stopping production on a line due to a concern about the safety of his workers. Mike considered a more intense production schedule on the line risky not only to the plant's capital equipment but also a violation of his ethical principles, which involved the belief that evena 1% risk of employees being injured was unacceptable. Legally, Mike had no legal recourse against his termination, especially as a white male in his thirties and because the company was not in violation of a state or federal statute (even if there had been, North Carolina had no legal exception). public). Fundamentally, employee rights (due in response to the observation that employees are people with goals and interests) require that they be respected and never treated only as a means to achieve the organization's goals (Rowan 360). Mike's concern was precisely linked to this point: that he and his subordinates were treated as superfluous factors. Mike was given no chance to mourn his firing. According to the company's involuntary dismissal policy, he was escorted out of the company immediately after his dismissal and his employee rights had already been terminated. Due process requires that employees, “as people who have goals, be afforded some degree of participation in their companies' decision-making processes” (Rowan 358). Even if Mike had been wrong, the company should have granted an appeal or a hearing – an outcome that would actually benefit the company by highlighting potential deficiencies in its security processes. Mike did not have the opportunity to defend himself in this context both because society and the law had no reason to do so, which would not have been the case if ethical principles had served as the basis for a public policy exception to the doctrine of 'at-will . However, the company's superior bargaining power allowed it to make a decision despite Mike's moral claim not to be unfairly fired. Within a few days, the company promoted someone else to oversee the line. Mike did not claim wrongful termination, and if he had, he would also have subjected the company to the direct costs of litigation (including grand jury verdicts and attorneys' fees). such as the loss of productivity that accompanies court proceedings. An increasingly common approach to establishing a balance between employee and employer power in an at-will context is internal dispute resolution. Internal dispute resolution promotes union avoidance, strengthens employer branding, and improves management of employer policies (Moskowitz 67). From the employee's perspective, it preserves the right to due process, including a fair grievance process, which Mike could have used to challenge the company's termination decision. Subjecting both the employer and employee to a third-party arbitration process ensures that the bargaining power differential between both parties is neutralized. This does not necessarily take away any benefits for employers; they must weigh this alternative against the additional cost-saving and productivity-enhancing benefits mentioned above. Establishing an internal or third-party dispute resolution process would fall under the responsibility of HR as the functional advocate for employees. Please note that such a dispute resolution system need not be mandatory; in fact, it could pose an even greater threat to workers' rights to have mandatory arbitration agreements as a condition of employment (Green 96). However, when offered as an alternative to employees who have no other recourse in the event of termination, it can fill an obvious gap in an at-will relationship. In addition to serving the company in the ability to improve its talent strategy, the.