Employers have moral responsibilities to uphold the social liberties of their employees. Some of these ethical liberties include, fair recruitment of the employees, freedom of speech and expression and upholding of employees welfare at the workplace. Violation of the legal rights of employees by their employers may adversely affect the company. This is because the employees may decide to quit the job making the company suffer the loss of competent and experienced worker force. In addition, the employees may sue their employers making which will become a legal liability to the company. This essay addresses the violation of legal considerations by ExtremeNet Company. It illustrates; what led to the legal infraction for the company, the best way the situation would have been solved, lessons learned from this situation and the ensuing consequences a result of the managers’ unethical conduct (Arthur, 2001, p.30).
ExtremeNet is a renowned company that offers internet services to its clients globally. Allen Lopez worked for the company for seven years but he was never comfortable with how the company treated its underpaid employees. The company experienced economic difficulties as a result of the effects of the economic downturn. In an effort to overcome this economic problem, the company decided that its only option was to lay off, its low-level workers. According to Allen, this was very unethical and especially by the way the exercise was being executed. There was lot of discrimination in both gender and age. He tried to complain to the senior management about the ill-treatment given to the junior employees but in vain. This greatly disappointed him. Thus he devoted all his weekends to develop a website that publicized the abusive treatment of the employees. To achieve his objective, he used an imaginary company that had almost similar characteristics to ExtremeNet. The website became very popular among high-technology companies. When the top management of ExtremeNet Company learned about the existence of the site, they decided to fire Allen. In addition, they convened a meeting to file a suit that would have this website removed from the global web (‘Employee Rights Case Study’, n. d., par.1).
The manner in which the management of ExtremeNet was treating their employees was not ethical. For instance, instead of the management of the company opting to lay off its underpaid employees, they could have devised other better strategies of dealing with the effects of economic downturn rather than to lay off their underpaid workers. For example, increasing the cost of their products might have been a better option. When Allen raised the issue of mistreatment of the low-level employees to the top management of ExtremeNet Company, they could have discussed with him the possibility of existence of any other better options rather than putting him off. The high attention that was given to the satiric website developed by Allen helped the company to realize the intensity of Allen’s concern for other workers. Although Allen was a very highly paid employee and was not to be laid off, his concern for other employees is amazing. This serves as a great lesson to management that all employees have rights that should not be violated regardless of their ranks in the company (Arthur, 2001, p.30-32).
Allen was a top performer in the company; the company lost an important resource when he was fired. The company’s integrity was tarnished by the bad publicity in the malicious website which was created by Allen. Thus future recruitment of employees in the company was compromised. Qualified persons would no longer trust the company with their job security. The situation instilled fear in other employees which possibly affected their productivity (Arthur, 2001, p.32).
Just treatment of the employees by their employers is a fundamental requirement for a company to succeed. The legal rights of the employees should always be respected regardless of their level in the company. Violation of employees’ legal considerations may have adverse effects on the company. This is because competent workers may quit and the integrity of the company is tarnished like in the case of Allen. The company may also incur legal liabilities in trying to negotiate with the affected parties.
Reference
Arthur, D. (2001). The Employee Recruitment and Retention Handbook. Web.
Employee Rights Case Study, (n. d.). 2010. Web.