bargaining

Are Employers Ethically Obligated Not To Take Advantage of Women’s Negotiation Choices?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

 

Yet another career for Shatner—coaching female job-seekers.

A recent study of 2500 job seekers indicated that men are far more likely to negotiate salary and benefits in job situations where it has no been stated that the salary is negotiable.

I am not surprised. Running non-profit organizations with limited resources, I always ended up with primarily female staffs because women would accept a lower offer than men with similar qualifications. This meant that the women got the jobs for salaries their male competition turned down. This, in turn, may have effected their salaries for a long time to come, in subsequent jobs. Is this bias?

Clearly not. The negotiations between an employer and potential employee are ethical and the conditions are known. A skilled negotiator (I am personally incompetent at negotiating my own fee; in ProEthics, my partner handles all of that) will get a better deal; a poor or reluctant negotiator will get terms more advantageous to the employer. It is not bias if the most aggressive and effective negotiators happen to be men.  Continue reading →

Nursing Strike Ethics and the Coolidge Principle

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.”

Long before he was famous for his abrupt and verbally stingy one-liners, Calvin Coolidge’s best known quote was this one, and we forget it at our peril. The line probably made him President: its context was the Boston police force strike of 1919. Coolidge, then Governor of Massachusetts, sided against the strikers, who despite legitimate demands for better pay and working conditions, lost their jobs. The next generation of Boston police officers, mostly hired from the ranks of veterans of World War I, got the benefits the strikers sought.

Coolidge’s sentiment is still valid, though unpopular, as ever, with organized labor and public servant unions. It was the philosophical and historical basis for President Ronald Reagan’s firing of the striking air traffic controllers during his first term, despite stong public sympathy for their stand. Like the Boston Police in 1919, they also lost their jobs for ever.

12,000 nurses in Minnesota Nurses Association are eligible to vote today on a potential indefinite strike. Continue reading →