Introduction
The Employment at Will Doctrine is basically a principle that is applicable to an existing employment agreement between an employer and an employee. The doctrine covers grounds based on ethics and at some point, even morality that is applicable to both the employees and the employer .
Scenario 1
Employees are considered as very important parts of a company. This is why in most cases, every act that a company’s employee commits is generally considered as a representative act of the entire organization . In the case of John, the one who posted a rant criticizing the company’s most important customer, he violated two laws of being an employee: the ethical and the moral law of being an employee. Should the customer—the most important customer at that, react to his Facebook rants, the company would surely have to brace itself for a huge impact in sales and financial figures, all because of an improperly disciplined employee. Even with the Employment at Will Doctrine at play, the company still reserves the right to dismiss John as a part of the company, or in other words, fire him because he is at the very least a potential threat to the existence of the company and its operations.
Scenario 2
Employees, just like normal people living in a democratic country, have the right to protest. In some cases, a strike may even be possible if the group of employees pushing for a change is really that aggressive. In most cases, the employer and the employees’ side may be able to arrive at a settlement. If otherwise, the service strike may continue. In other cases, the push for a change is even brought to court. What Jim did was he sent emails to a bunch of sales people containing information about a protest to change the commission schedules, rates, and bonuses, and suggested that everyone should boycott the next sales people meeting should the management fail to come to terms with their proposal. Firstly, that was downright unethical, especially when we assume that Jim had not informed the upper management, or at least the team leaders, about the boiling situation among sales people. What Jim fails to understand here is that things like changes in commission schedules, rates, and bonuses cannot happen in just a single snap because these things have to be analyzed first, especially their effects. At this point, there is no way to legally fire Jim. However, what I suggest for the CEO to do is to try and talk to Jim and the other sales people and arrive at a reasonable agreement that would prevent other people from doing what Jim just did.
Scenario 3
As mentioned in Scenario 2, every employee or a group of employees has the right to protest and voice out their concerns about the company, in an ethical way at least. Most corporations discourage and even punish protests and requests that are accompanied with unethical and often violent behavior. This is why in most companies, each employee, whenever they fell they need to let something out of their mind is encouraged to talk to their supervisor or team leader. It would then be the responsibility of the team leader to relay the noxious stimuli to other major people involved if ever. This is what you call chain of command. What Ellen did was inappropriate. Civil charges that may be filed against her may include but are not limited to libel and public defamation, among other things. The internet may seem to be a very conducive place to voice out concerns about something, something related to work for example. However, this does not mean that one is already allowed, both legally and morally, to degrade the integrity and reputation of a person or any entity. In this case, I would still recommend that the CEO or at least the HRM or Human Resource Manager to talk to Ellen and find out what possible sanctions may be given to her inappropriate behaviors and what possible interventions may be proposed to prevent other employees from following suit.
Scenario 4
Every employee has the right to have his own private life outside the workplace . An employee may involve so much personal things about his life in the workplace and in the same manner, he may also not. The decision of doing so is entirely up to the employee. From an ethical perspective, what Bill did was unethical—using the company-issued smartphone in running his own business on the side. He is basically using the assets of the company for his own, something which can actually be already considered a form of plunder or corruption, although in a small scale. This would certainly be too small an issue to be brought to court. Issues this small can be best addressed by talking with the persons involved and investigating the main issue further to identify who did what and so on. For this case, I would recommend that the CEO stay out of the issue and focus on and dedicate his time on more importance issues about the company because issues like these can be better off handled by human resource management professionals.
Scenario 5
What the secretaries did—dressing black and white inside the office as a form of protest, was at least near the ideal form of employee protest. However, this does not mean that we are promoting the presence of protest because the presence of ongoing protest means that there is something wrong with the way the company is being managed and or regulated. So this is not to be considered a good thing, no matter how peaceful it may seem to be, but this is not necessarily to be considered a bad thing too because as mentioned before, every employee has been given the right to voice out their concerns, and even stage a protest. Most protests are unethical, but not this one. It does not violate any law unless of course the company policy states that employees must follow a certain dress code at all times. Nonetheless, this is a peaceful form of protest because the secretaries are still planning to work on their cubicles, which means that no significant impact would be done on the company’s operations. Certainly, this issue is not going to be entertained by the court because that would merely be a waste of their time. What I recommend for the CEO is to let the human resources manager handle the issue because things like this are still easy to solve with an agreement and discussion at the very least.
Scenario 6
The issue here about Joe threatening to sue the company for invasion of privacy after the company found out that he criticized a customer and laid out sanctions against him is not that clear. Companies reserve the right to monitor their resources, even the resources that are dedicated for each of their employee, during work hours. If the email-address that Joe used was issued by the company, then by all means, the company has the right to monitor the way how his company email-address was being used. In case Joe used his own email address to criticize the company’s client but was using company resources like the venue and electricity for sending the criticism email, the company’s detailed scrutiny of his account activities may still be considered legal and not at all an invasion of privacy. The main recommendation for the CEO here is to wait things out and if it turns out that Joe will indeed sue the company for invasion of privacy, then that’s the time to hire a lawyer. Nonetheless, if any of the two given instances were true, the company would have a strong case against Joe’s.
Scenario 7
No legal actions should be undertaken unless the management already has strong evidences describing who did what and what who did to whom. The company may certainly benefit from having an intra-organizational whistleblower policy in cases like this. Should the claim of the secretary with glowing job performance records be true, then one applicable legal charge for the department supervisors involved would be falsification of documents. However, libel charges may be charged against the secretary should her accusations be proven wrong or maliciously crafted. The recommended step here is to investigate on the issue further first before drawing in any conclusions and making any legal step.
Scenario 8
The policy regarding the firing or dismissal of en employee greatly varies from one company to another. In this case however, it can be seen that the reason behind Anna’s boss desire to fire Anna is too shallow and ungrounded. Anna should at least be given the chance to explain and even pass the necessary documents to support whatever her excuse may be such as a medical certificate in case she was sick at the time or a death certificate in case she was visiting a deceased relative. The recommended step here is to wait things out until all concerned parties were already given the chance and the time to respond.
References
Jonas, A. (2009). The Employment at Will Doctrine in the I.T. Industry. Journal of Human Resource Managemant.
Oscar, Y. (2012). The basic rights of a company employee. Oxford University Press.
Yuka, J. (2010). Cost and Benefits of Employee Behaviors. Journal of Human Resource Managemant.
