I also stated that business should be run in as ethically as
possible. Do you consider that ethical?
But we have also caused some of this behavior as we demand the lowest
priced product available.
Plus I think Wall Street is also responsible as they demand that a
business publicly held show a profit.
Stewart
At 03:36 PM 11/27/2009, you wrote:
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
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