If you are comparing this to what happens when bad people get fired from good companies for the right reasons, I have to ask you in all seriousness:
What color is the sky in your world?
Could it be possible that the reason why you notice people bitching about their awful bosses is that so few people complain about it that you notice them all? Sure, there are asshole bosses who get on power trips and abuse their authority.
The same can be said for police officers, but it doesn’t mean we should lessen good cops’ abilities to do their jobs.
What amazes me is that you expect to get reasonable discussion of corporate issues when you portray managers and executives this way.
I don’t even know why I bothered responding in the first place, you keep going back to the executive as moustache-twirling villian as “evidence” supporting your viewpoint.
Your analogy would work if one man (or one woman) could have 10, 100, 1000, 10,000 or 100,000 spouses. But the fact is that in our society, we have this one spouse at a time deal going. Which means that in a divorce, both parties face equal risks. In fact all the stats indicate that both parents very likely suffer in a divorce, economically and personally.
In a firing, one party, the fired one, tends to suffer much greater problems than the other – in fact, as has been repeatedly pointed out on this very thread, the firer may benefit greatly from a firing. So it’s not a valid analogy. But there is one point that is kinda germane here: it used to be that women suffered much more greatly than men in a divorce, in financial terms. They generally got child custody, but the didn’t get any extra money, and as it was customary for the man to be the “breadwinner” in the family, they often had little in the way of experience and/or job skills to make a living wage.
Fortunately, in the 50s and 60s the total unfairness of this situation was widely recognized, and law were written giving the wife equal share in whatever wealth/income the couple possessed.
Clearly, we as a group (Dopers and society at large) haven’t recognized the huge inequity in the harm that firing does the firee vs. the firer, but we’ll get there, I’m sure, in a few decades. Less, if things go well.
I want to really thank you, Hakuna and John Carter, for bringing this point up.
But you’ve got no problem with the stress your father underwent so the compnay could make more money … right?
While this may be true, I fail to see how it relates to someone being fired. Can you be more plain for the analogy impaired?
Business pick up a lot of the cost for a firing. They pay unemployment insurance - that program is 100% funded by unemployment taxes. In the case of a RIF there are almost always severance packages, transition help, resume help, etc. available. Last RIF we went through gave employees 30 days notice during which they could come into the office and use the equipment to work - or not, we’d pay them regardless. We had resume counselors and headhunters on site and were handing out referrals to other services that the company would pay for. Then people got severance pay on top of that.
Furthermore, we have a global economy. The higher the burden we put on U.S. companies, the more attractive offshoring gets. The more attractive just picking up the whole darn company and moving it to China gets. Or just closing it down because you can’t compete with a company founded in Bangkok that can do what you can do for ten cents on the dollar because they don’t have to pay benefits. You want jobs in the U.S? Don’t raise the bar so damn hard U.S. companies can’t compete. Welcome to the new global economy - the bar is going to get a lot lower in the U.S. (the nice thing is that its already a lot higher in Bangalore and Shenzhen). And protectionism won’t help, its a big damn market out there and the quickest way to become isolated in it is to put it protectionist policies.
Evil Captor, since you wish to debate with those who respond to your “poll”, I’m going to move this from IMHO to Great Debates.
Excellent point. And one which reminds me of arguments I sometimes have with my sister who has bleeding heart liberal tendencies (despite having voted for dum-dum).
I ride the bus on occasion, for awhile because I was rebuilding my financial life and had no vehicle, then because it was to save money etc. Anyway, I digress.
On the bus there are a number of mentally challenged adults. They manage to get themselves up and dressed and to their jobs, whatever they may be day after day. So it’s not like the whole (my sister’s tired argument) “well yes, but they may not have the intelligence and powers that you have, you’re really smart and strong (no I’m a ditzy blond and I manage) some people don’t have that”.
Puh LEASE…if the mentally challenged people can do it ANYONE can.
[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
Clearly, we as a group (Dopers and society at large) haven’t recognized the huge inequity in the harm that firing does the firee vs. the firer, but we’ll get there, I’m sure, in a few decades. Less, if things go well.
[QUOTE]
Harm? People are fired by need. Either they need to be fired (poor workmanship, violation of work place practices) or the company needs to fire them (loss of contracts, production, or profiibilty).
I live in an “at will” employment state. It’s pretty simple: you wark at the will of your employer. I have several people that work for me, and i could fire them all tomorrow on the basis that i no longer wish to employ them. Now, they could then apply for unemployment, or try to find if they had been fired for any discrimintory purpose, etc., but as long as i cross my I’s and dot my T’s I can do just that. At the same time, my boss can simply walk into my office and announce it’s time for me to go, and I am at the same whim.
I kinda like it that way - I hate to think that companies can be forced to keep excessive numbers of employees because unions protect their jobs, or that you are morally obligated to keep the population as a whole on a payroll. Hell, if I am payig taxes for the unemplyed, why should i worry about putting someone onto that payroll?
I also know that through a system of properly utilized employee reprimands and procedure, 9 of 10 times an employee will take the hint and terminate their employment before I have to fire them.
Exactly - and by and large there are GREAT numbers of disabled/handicapped/retarded/insert proper phrase of the day here people who are gainfully employed. What amazes me is when you know someone, as I did, who will go OVER 18 MONTHS with no job, because ‘the jobs I find don’t pay enough’. Tough shit! I learened from a bag of m&ms at about age 5 somethings more than nothing any day of the week.
I can see from this comment that you’ve never had to fire anybody. May you never. I’ve had to fire a single mom with three small children. Why? Because she wasn’t doing her work and the other two good employees there, who also needed their jobs, told me that if I didn’t stop giving her One More Chance and do what I knew a had to do, they were going to quit.
What would YOU have done? Me, I fired her, as I should have done three months earlier.
You’re welcome, but a reasonable person won’t think the divorce analogy plays to your favor the way you seem to think it does.
The minority of supervisors that you describe usually get fired themselves pretty quickly. (They are bad for business) If you want to gripe about a few bad bosses, that subject is a different one than your thread title.
It’s pretty simple to decide if the ability to fire is bad or not. Imagine the situation if you could not fire anyone. Would you start if a company under those circumstances?
The idea that a company “dump[s] the social and human costs of this on society” when that person is fired makes the false assumption that once a company hires someone, that company must be responsible for that person from then on. No, if a person is unemployable, that person dumps the cost of supporting himself on society. No one owes anyone else a job. And just because you created some jobs doesn’t mean you are bound by some societal contract to maintain those jobs. That would be absurd.
To answer the thread title: No.
Why do people think they’re entitled to a job? A private corporation is not in business to provide social welfare. They hire people to do certain duties and the company recompenses them accordingly. In a society where basic fucking competence is a rare find, a boss should take everyone who is not doing their job and stick their foot so far up their ass they have brush their teeth with shoepolish - then if they don’t start working, fire them.
Anyone who think that a company owes a salary to someone who doesn’t do their job, do this: hire someone off the street to clean your house, pay them $50/day to do it. See how long you keep paying them when your house is still filthy every day when you get home.
Can you substantiate that statement? Just curious, Joe.
I spoke to some people from Switzerland at a class once. Their model was that they were on contracts for a certain number of years, and were pretty much unfireable during that time. At the end of the contract, however, they could be let go for any or no reason.
What do people think about this model?
Obviously, when hiring, you try your best to identify a person that will work out. Sometimes you don’t succeed.
I wouldn’t want to hire someone I couldn’t let go if they weren’t working out.
EC, some questions for you.
In the places I’ve worked, execs are a lot more at risk than workers. Do you think firing a VP who has not met her goals for two years is okay? She has probably made a good salary.
I assume that you’re okay with the reasons for immediate termination that many companies have, such as drugs and violence. Do you think someone who hit a co-worker deserves a second chance? How about someone selling drugs on company time?
The places I’ve worked have had very clear performance improvement plans, where someone at risk is given a very clear set of objectives. This is not a coverup for firing - I know for a fact that the plan where I work now is targeted towards keeping, not firing, people. How do you feel about firing someone who fails the plan, or who doesn’t even try? How about failing more than once? Remember that Maureen said Joan was on a few of these.
Now a comment. Layoffs are bad, but necessary. If a company hired too many people, some have to go. Many are for divisions, and in Silicon Valley being laid off is no longer considered a stigma. Layoffs may also be a sign of a company going under, and getting out early might be a good thing, especially when there is money. I’ve never been fired or laid off, but I did take a package, which was one of the smartest things I ever did. I got a job quickly, got a good bit of money, and my old center went downhill fast. A few people were prevented from taking it, because they were considered valuable, but both left within six months.
Well, I just was fired, more precisely my contract was not renewed, my quality surveys were always in a perennial seesaw, it is very hard to work with an accent when people in the US are becoming fed up on being transferred to tech centers overseas, hard to prove that that they were in America when they reached me. So, as this was a service based on scores from customers, it did not matter that I had always high scores in my troubleshooting skills.
So, back to the worse job of all that is to search for a job, however this time I am not complaining about lack of health care, as I was officially a temp I never got health care even though I worked there for more than a year.
Now, having said all that I do in the end agree that firing people should be allowed, as other poster said, it depends on the situation if that is bad or good. Because I see that in the future people will have less job security, then other safety nets like universal health care should be applied.