I am working in Kuwait Ministry of Information at the Salary Department. Employees in my department are responsible for keeping salary accounts of all the staff of the Ministry. The average salary in our Department is below average. The contract provides 35 days of holidays per year. These days should be chosen by an employee himself, provided that he would preliminary book it. The salary is always paid on certain days of the mouth and we, staff of the Salary Department, have to work on these days despite of everything in order to complete the work.
The issue I would like to address is violation of our working conditions. As I have mentioned above certain days of each month are compulsory busy days for any person in the Salary Department. The problem is sometimes these dates clash with weekends as well as national holidays. Despite of any holidays and weekends my colleagues and I have to be at work, performing our duties. We are not paid any additional overtime charges or monthly bonuses for this extra work. Moreover, no days off are provided in retaliation for such inconveniences. Basically, our labor rights are violated without any compensation. Such working conditions adversely affect employees’ social life and impose enormous pressure on us and our families as well.
This interesting circumstance that makes our position controversial is the lack of paragraphs about our job perception and our immediate duties. In fact, our supervisors (managers) are responsible for both attendance and performance. This means that each manager tracks our schedule and time when we arrive to work and leave.
I consider this issue to be ethical, because it involves a conflict of interests. Governmental agency is responsible morality and principles into conflict. Here I see alternative with Kant ideologies of categorical imperative and utilitarianism theory:
Categorical Imperative: “Act as though you would want your act to be a universal law” (Paton 1971)
Utilitarianism “Act is a way that results in the greatest good for the greatest number of people” (Paton 1971)
According to Categorical Imperative interests of employees are protected, as labors ethics forbids any form of discrimination (about which, in fact, we talk). On the other hand, utilitarianism theory sacrifices our interests in favor of our duty to perform our obligations by all means (Uleman 2010).
It becomes more evident that ethics of relations with civil employees (workers of the Salary Department) becomes more and more into conflict with the ethics of public service. Civil servants have obligations to their Ministers. At the same time, the ultimate client of civil servant is society itself (Sims and Brinkmann 2002). So, both the ministry and its employees have obligations. This case raises the problem of code of ethics for civil servants. Our personal interests contradict our duties. The same is fair in relation to our Ministry that forces us to work without any extra payment, violating labor law. Ethical ambiguity of this issue should be revised from two opposite dimensions:
Violation of Salary Department employees’ rights
Respect for obligations to other employees (Chapman 1993).
For sure, responsibilities of Ministry to pay salary are important, but fulfillment of other even more important moral responsibilities to treat workers fairly contradicts the first one. To my mind, there is a solution to this issue. I would like to apply Corporate Social Responsibility principles, which in this case should be transformed into Government Social Responsibilities principles (since we deal with governmental agency) (Schein 1985).
The first point to consider is the attempts to resolve the issue undertaken by our Ministry. Governmental agency, as a social responsible entity should take seriously its responsibilities for providing proper employment conditions and eliminating any sort of discrimination towards its employees (Watson 2003).
CRS theories have already developed the image of ethical employer, but at the same time there are no talks about governmental agencies responsibilities. For sure, the structure and nature of employee-employer relations in public sector are quite similar to those in the private companies (Spence 2000). Why, then, no codes of conduct are employed? To tell the truth, there is no document in our Ministry that fully covers employees’ responsibilities and rights. There is no legal base to claim for violations except for labor law.
Another aspect of this issue is that there are no incentives for any governmental structure to follow basic moral or ethical principles (which are embedded in CSR policies). That is because:
Governmental agency is non-profit entity.
There are no regulatory bodies to oversee its labor policy (Wood and Maureen 1997).
So, given all abovementioned, I would say that our neither our Ministry nor our immediate managers tried to combat the problem. For sure, we had frequent talks with our supervisors regarding this issue, but no response or explanation followed.
As my colleague once noted “it is all about conveying an atmosphere of persistent rules violation.” For instance, our official vacation policy is that anyone can take 35-day vacation, but according to the verbal rule, nobody can ask for it without preliminary agreement of the manager. This is a testimonial of how our HR department works. Thus, such practices involve much deeper disrespect to labor ethics on the part of the management and employees as well (Brinkmann and Ims 2003).
Such actions sent a clear message that management’s attention is concentrated on meeting results on time without any possible harm to management itself, regardless of the means to get there. Such means are usually employees and their families. As Sims (1992) has suggested, if management seeks to meet short-term obligations, employees quickly get the message too. I dare say that he was right. The corporate atmosphere is worsening from day to day (Sims 1992).
Employees often emulate leaders’ behavior and look to the leaders for cues to appropriate behavior. Culture of intolerance ruins any institution, even non-profit one (Weaver, Trevino, and Cochran 1999). They seem to be over what social responsibilities. It is a broad concept and can refer to a wide variety of business practices, such as philanthropic activities performing without expectation of return (Jamali and Keshishian 2009). They seem to be over what social responsibilities. It is a broad concept and can refer to a wide variety of business practices, such as philanthropic activities performing without expectation of return (Josephson 1999). But people working for government and charities are not volunteers. They need to be treated according to special Code of Ethics and Code of Conduct, not to say about Labor Law. There is no such document in our Ministry. For me, this seems to be one of the two major problems within the issue in question.
If we talk about rights of service agents, I would also like to cover their responsibilities, which are, by the way stated in the document “Principles of Ethical Conduct for Employees”.
These principles constitute the essence of the standards of ethical and moral conduct regulation. Any violation of the present rules may result in disciplinary penalties or even prosecution (Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer).
In particular, I would love to address one single provision of that rules: “Employees shall put forth honest effort in the performance of their duties.” This phrase shows the ethics of our issue. We have to respect our duties which mean to perform our work accordingly. This implies regular extra hours of work without payment or any kind of compensation. I would like to change the circumstances. And I would like to present my solution of this ethical problem.
My suggestion is to engage our trade union into the process of resolution of this ethical issue. In case they are reluctant to cooperate, we shall initiate a procedure or re-election of union’s chairpersons. Around 83% of labor issues in the UK are resolved through trade unions (Akyeampong 2012).
The first entity to protect employees’ rights is a trade union. Every employee of our department is a member of trade union. This means that issues should be addressed directly there and union should consequently set in motion a process of resolution. Any issues arising are points of concern to the union. For sure, trade unions are a significant power that can make change. In fact, our trade union is pointless. (Reinhold 2013)
Employees must understand that any single employee who operates outside of the organizational value system can’t make any impact on the organization’s culture. Moreover, a single person cannot have guarantees for safety. Employees must trust that whistleblowers will be protected, that procedures used to investigate ethical problems will be fair, and that management will take action to solve problems that are uncovered (Trevino and Nelson 2011).
"Social Responsibility" doctrine is brought into sharp relief when the doctrine is used to justify wage restraint by trade unions. More controversial conflict of interests may be seen when the union pursues more general interests of its members.
Union leaders are average people and they are likely to have best intentions sometimes. True leaders may even be emotionally attached and honest, but for sure, that is not about our local union. In fact, as time goes on they become even more influenced by the entity they supervise. “They enter into friendly relations with the employers and unconsciously absorb the ethics of capitalist society,” (Kuruvilla, Das, Kwon 2002).
On the other hand, unionized workers have more power to negotiate working conditions. In our case the best chances to succeed may be only due to the help of the trade union. Issues of ethics are subtle and need mutual collaboration (Kuchinke 2005).
“Generally, when it comes to ethical and moral issues within a workplace, those employees that are union-backed have a greater piece of mind than those that aren’t union-backed. There is strength in numbers and when it comes to fighting for fair employee relations it can be a great benefit to be union backed,” (Todate 2010). Labor ethics is a question of “deep” corporate culture embodied in such artifacts as: ethics codes, ethics officers and the like.
So, practically, my approach is to engage our trade union into work on the resolution of the issue. Trade union has to hold a meeting, present a draft of Code of Conduct that will regulate our working conditions, obligations and duties. The second step would be to notify our Ministry of our intention to negotiate provisions of this document. Mutual cooperation will allow us to come to common ground. Ethical conflict implies conflict of interest. In order to resolve it and make it ethical, both parties (employees and the ministry should find a compromise). To my mind this is the only way to satisfy the needs of both parties with respect to their obligations In particular, employees have to perform their duties during the predetermined working hours, receiving just compensation for extra hours. Ministry should ensure sound working conditions and respect the social life of its employees.
Works Cited
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