Okay, I resisted this discussion until this email of yours, Stewart.
Yes, business has a right to make a profit. But, does it have a right
to maximize its profits by maximizing the exploitation of its
workers? If the answer to that is yes, then I'd say you have no
business of being in the business of ethics and morality. Whatever
happened to being humane? Whatever happened to allowing one's workers
some balance in their lives so that they spend some time with their
families? Have we become so obsessed with profit that we have lost
track of why we work: so that we may live? And not the other way
around: live so that we may work.
Most human beings will work as much as is needed to survive. But
isn't one of the objectives of a great country the happiness of its
people? Anybody who has hired someone for a standard job (~40
hours/week) but is asking that person, whether directly or indirectly
via the work environment, to work 1.5 or double the time as a
day-to-day thing (not for short-term peaks) should really have hired
1.5 or 2 people. A $30/hour programmer here is working at $15/hour if
he works twice as many hours (and many do). If that business cannot
make a profit except by asking each employees to work like two, then
that is either a badly-run business or one that should cease to
exist. Yes, that might create some additional unemployment, but
perhaps we will learn to live with fewer profits and run our
businesses better. Too many businesses are run with a focus on
attaining a certain profit. Which is why we have the media reporting
businesses as being in trouble just because profits fell. Gosh,
people, there were profits, not just as much. The business didn't
make a loss. So why all the moaning about the business being in
trouble? In a down economy, a lower profit, but still a profit,
should be good news. It's the kind of thinking that resulted in
Gourmet magazine being shut down.
We will never defeat China, for example, in profit-making by adopting
its labor practices. But, here is the real question: what profiteth a
man if he were to become rich on the backs of his brothers? Just as
our liberties and values better the lot of others by being shared
with humans around the world, similarly our business practices should
be looked upon as being better for humanity than the practices of
other countries.
On a personal level, my father owned and operated an auto dealership
and workshop business in India for 50 years. No labor unions in his
workshop (too small). However, his workers had a standard 9-6 working
day, 5.5 days a week (those were the standard work hours in India at
the time: equivalent to 44 hours/week). He had a pension scheme for
them; small, but better than the nothing that practically all other
such workers had. There was no health insurance, but he paid for
expenses that were not already provided free in government hospitals,
mainly medicines and operations. When a labor union tried to organize
the workers and get them to strike (a popular way to make the
employer come to the bargaining table), his workers came and told him
about it and refused to strike. When the business had a major loss
one year, the workers voluntarily gave up one month's salary and
presented that as a solution to my father, without his asking it of
them. Of course, they knew that if the business failed they'd be out
of a job, but his competitors had labor strikes practically every
year and bad worker morale.
Guess where my dad learned these business practices? He attended an
executive MBA program (although they weren't called those back then)
in the US in the 40s. The program was fully funded by GM and took
only 40 people each year. Now in his 90s, my dad still thinks that
the US taught him how to treat people well and make a profit.
However, his profit was less than half of that which others in the
same type of business could make. My dad wasn't some kind of business
saint, but just practiced what he'd been taught, and felt that we
each have an ethical and moral duty to other human beings.
When I started working in my current job, I felt that long weeks were
expected of me. So, I often put in 60-hour weeks. After some years of
this, I came to my senses. I deliberately tried to work toward 40-45
hour weeks. Guess what? My productivity went up, and I actually could
do more work in less time. Granted, I don't make widgets on a
production line: my job is that of a university faculty member
(although my work is research and I help operate a lab that raises
its own money and operates like a non-profit business) and requires
much thinking things through, same as programmers require.
Of late, India has adopted the current business practices of the US.
Believe it or not, their programmers work long hours, too, except at
a fraction of the salary here. So, yes, they've managed to put many
of our programmers out of work. But, guess which business is booming
there? Psychiatry! So, they are screwing-up their middle class just
as well as we've screwed up our middle class. (Their lower-income
class was already screwed, and continues to be so.) Even some of the
ethical companies there are slipping on their ethics and allowing
these bad practices. Too bad we did not succeed in exporting the
example set by some of our better companies. There isn't enough
profit in that, I guess.
Adil
At 03:14 PM 11/27/2009, you wrote:
Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:30:58 -0600
From: "Rev. Stewart Marshall" <popoz...@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: Gulag?
I don't know where you got that, but you cannot have a business
unless you are making a profit.
There is a difference between making a profit ethically and making a
profit unethically.
I think that is the real difference. Unless you feel businesses
should not make a profit?
I happen to be in a business that deals with ethics and morality, and
I can tell you they are not much better than anyone else in that area.
But I go back to my original question. Do you feel that a business
has a right/better yet has a need to make a profit?
Stewart
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