It would be a cruel joke were an airline to keep the
extendable corridor back as the plane’s front door is opened and passengers are
pushed out. Not even having a safety net below would neither be sufficient nor
fair. When a government gives companies the flexibility to fire workers without
yet having in place vocational safety nets, said government acts negligently
and perhaps even with partiality to one side of the labor-management duality. At
the very least, the flexibility to fire should be held off until the matter of
economic security is finalized.
With the largest automaker in the E.U. state of France
announcing the firing of 1,300, the largest supermarket-chain in the state set
to cut 2,500, and 200 at a major clothing retailer in January, 2018, companies
were already “taking advantage of new rules that make it easier to hire and
fire. But the other changes, those designed to help cushion the blow like
retraining programs,” were not yet in place, “leaving workers vulnerable to a
coming wave of downsizing” in a state whose unemployment rate had been “persistently
stuck at more than 9 percent for more than a decade.”[1]
The Times goes on to point out that “the initial imbalance between employer
rights and workers’ protections means the economic picture could get worse
before it gets better.”[2]
This way of expressing the matter highlights the possibility that the
government officials were biased in favor of the business lobby (and cash).
I submit that protections for citizens—providing a safety
net even if only for workers in transition—is more important than employer
rights (i.e., property rights) because even just risking sustenance is a
greater harm than holding on for a while to old rigid rules on firings. The
case of an impending bankruptcy may be different, as firing some employees
could save the jobs of the majority.
In this analysis, I am drawing on Bentham’s utilitarian
ethical theory, wherein the greatest good in terms of pleasure (less pain) is
the criterion. Generally, a public policy that restricts the choices of a company’s
management creates less pain than the corresponding pleasure (without pain of
losing sustenance) for the workforce. Opening up the choices creates pleasure
(and reduces pain) for managements and stockholders, but the pain of being
unemployed is more. Even given Bentham’s claim that such pleasure and pain
could be put in quantitative terms, the pain from losing the means of livelihood
and possibly having to do without even on the basics (food, shelter, and
medical care) is high indeed—so high that even comparing it to the pleasure
obtained by the companies seems an injustice. This is not a justification for
regulation or socialism (i.e., the state owns the means of production); rather,
I submit that balance, such as in the
timing of the public policies on firings and worker-security, is a ripe
additive to Bentham’s theory.
[1]
Liz Alderman, “Newfound Freedom . . . to Fire,” The New York Times, January 24, 2018.
[2]Ibid.
