Moral Rights
Barry & Shaw (2013) offer an insight into the determination of the wages of an employee. However, it is difficult to select and determine the best wages for certain employees. There remains a gap between the employers and the employed concerning employee compensation. It is important to observe that whereas most employers feel that they are paying the best rates in the market, many employees keep complaining. The authors mention economic, institutional, and behavioral and equity considerations as the main factors towards determining the wage bill for a particular employee. For instance, companies operating at huge profit margins tend to pay relatively higher than those operating at a loss do. On the other hand, in cases where there is a lot of labor supply, employers tend to pay less. For this reason, the trend for both companies and workers is that companies try to establish themselves in areas where labor supply is high, whereas the workers shift to areas where there is a lot of demand for labor and thus high pay.
In summary Shaw and Barry summarize wage level determinants into three categories, which are the employer’s ability to pay, the employer willing to pay, and lastly, how much the employee accepts the wages. However helpful the authors’ contributions to the wage level determination for a particular employee are, it is still difficult to answer the question of whether a particular wage is fair or unfair. Since most companies do not disclose their ability to pay to their employees, it is difficult to express their willingness to pay, and hence the employees will feel cheated by their employers.
Most companies are increasingly adopting corporate social responsibility initiatives as a way of establishing goodwill to the communities in which they operate and as a way of giving back to society. These companies have established departments within their operational structures to spearhead these activities. Since these initiatives are not in the core line of business of the company and add operational costs to the company, it becomes more difficult to hire full-time employees to drive these initiatives. For this reason, companies may require their employees to participate in these activities. Whereas these activities should ideally be voluntary, there are times when only a few employees are willing to take part in such initiatives. The question then is, “Does an employer have the moral right to recognize such efforts through promotions and pay rise?”
As explained above, corporate social responsibility initiatives form an important part of the life of any entity. Firms should, therefore, see to it that they do all the best to contribute to such initiatives. Firms can achieve this by incorporating such activities into their corporate cultures to which every employee identifies with. This, thus, justifies that as a condition of employment that employees participate in organizations apart from the business. As well, it justifies the moral right of employees to base promotions and raises upon an employee’s contribution to such initiative irrespective of what the organization is or the principles involved. A business can only succeed if its employees identify with the company’s mission and vision statement. Since corporate social responsibility initiatives form part of the company’s mission statement, all employees should learn to adapt and practice these values at the earliest possible opportunity (Barry & Shaw 2013).
Reference
Barry, V. & Shaw, W. (2013). Moral Issues in Business (12th Ed.). Wadsworth: Cenage Learning.