There are many different ways of looking at this, but as I said earlier if you look at purely from the effects on society, you still need to be able to fire people. Consider two societies: In the first one, no one is allowed to fire anyone. For the sake of argument, let’s say the second one is the US as it exists now. Which do you think will be the better overall society?
I think that the posters who “favor” firing are aware that being fired can be a devastating event for the firee. My support of firing takes the firee’s point of view into account, based on personal experience. When I was 33, I got fired from a lousy, demanding, difficult, low-paying job for what amounted to a one-time incidence of being a smartass to the owner of the business. That event forced me to examine myself and eventually spurred me to get a two-year technical degree and an actual career. Since I got my degree, I’ve had 17 years of continuous employeement and have achieved a pretty comfortable middle class standard of living. The jobs I’ve had in my new career have been “at will” jobs. I am protected, to a large degree, from being fired by doing my job effectively. My employer has enough invested in me that I won’t be fired capriciously. If my performance deteriorates, I will be warned and counseled, because it’s cheaper to do that than to hire and train someone new.
Companies which employ people do so because they need tasks performed by those people. They need the people performing those tasks to do so in a way that doesn’t diminish the overall effectiveness of the department or company. Most organizations are reluctant to fire people. It doesn’t change anything to argue that this reluctance is due to pragmatic rather than altruistic reasons. The reluctance is there.
As has been stated by others, firing as it is normally practiced is the US is a net benefit to society as a whole. Letting go a non-performing or disruptive employee often improves the working conditions and productivity of others in the company, usually improves the effectiveness and profitability of the company, usually provides employment to a more effective and deserving person, and can often trigger behavioral changes that will benefit the firee.
Firing is not morally neutral. Firing has great potential to do harm to human beings, just like layoffs. The people who support torture are claiming that it, too, is morally neutral. Acts that have great potential to harm human beings are generally not morally neutral. I’m not buying either case. We can think about the effects of firing without bringing up its moral content, but I’m not accepting it as a morally neutral act without debate.
Just because people are often able to survive something, does not make it a good thing. See: muggings, rapes, etc.
We are in agreement here, except that I don’t have a clear idea how the problem should be addressed, which is why I posed the question “Are Firings A Good Thing”? rather than “How Can We Curtail the Harm that Firings Do?” I do think in general the safety net should be made stronger, not torn up as Republicans and libertarians advocate.
I’m saying that, whatever kind of problem people pose for a given business, firing them, while it may solve the business’ problem, still poses a social problem. You can’t just write people off because they’ve been fired … they still look for new jobs, where they continue to cause problems if they don’t learn from their experience (something people who get fired a lot probably don’t do often) and if they can’t find work, they are an economic burden. What’s so hard to understand there?
EC, I think you’re wrong here. My personal experience with being fired, and my knowledge of others who have responded positively to being fired lead me to believe that firing is so traumatic and attention-inducing that the majority of people who are fired make attempts to change things in their lives.
Not being normal does not equal being mentally ill. If it did, there would be a LOT of Dopers qualifying as mentally ill.
I’m not sure. I just know we can do better than just hating the person that gets fired.
True, it hasn’t helped with Dubya …
I’m not sure what you mean by “be an adult.” I said in the thread you reference that I understood that Maureen had plenty of cause for firing Joan. What are you looking for here? Should we pile rocks on Joan after firing her? Would that make her, or Joan, more adult?
As I have noted, unemployment insurance is not generally awared with firing for cause, and there are a number of paperwork procedures an employer can use to fire an employee “for cause” even if there is no actual cause, that will get unemployment insurance denied.
Wow. Just…wow. Firing is comparable to torture, muggings and rapes (with the good ol’ ‘etc’ thrown in).
Can an individual firing not be morally neutral? Sure. You, EC, just need to come to the realization that not every manager/boss/CEO/Great Leader is not a Trump-like ass getting jollies off of firing. The vast majority, I’m willing to bet (if we can find an agreeable way to measure), would prefer if they never had to fire anyone.
Firing/laying-off is emphatically NOT violence. It’s a fact of business. It is a tool. It is necessary. People do get fired for no reason and might be denied their unemployment insurance - that’s a piss-poor employer. They exist, just as piss-poor employees do. The newly unemployed is probably better off, long-term.
To address the ‘European Model’ (because as everyone knows, all of Europe is one group mind), this American will not be voting for any politicians espousing it. I prefer to pay less in taxes and take care of myself. If you choose not to plan properly, I don’t want to be penalized for it. A social safety net, as I’ve stated, is good. I could even get behind a well-thought out National Health Plan, supplemented by private insurance (not that I’m holding my breath for any politicians to propose a well-thought out plan). What I can’t get behind is a government who holds my hand and tells me when to cross the street, and that’s how I feel about many European governments.
Firing is neither good nor bad, it is simply necessary.
People are hired to do jobs in a certain manner with a certain expectation. If they cannot do so, the company has to let them go and replace them with someone who can do the job as defined.
Workers who “perform poorly” are of course- “not pulling their own weight” and thus can be laid off.
But here’s the whole false assumption. Let’s take an employee “Bob”. Now Manager “Rita” hires Bob, but then says that Bob is insubordinate and has poor work habits. Rita is unable to document anything that woudl be acceptable for “firing with cause”- no excessive lateness, no thefts, etc. But Rita now wants to fire Bob as Bob “is difficult or not doing their jobs”. So, it appears you’d go along with firing Bob? However, we only have Rita’s word for it that Bob is a bad employee. Maybe Rita is a bad manager (after all, Rita did hire Bob, right?), maybe it’s just that Rita dislikes Bob for personal reasons. So- firing Bob ion such a way he doesn’t qualify for severence benefits or Unemployment Comp is just plain wrong. Bob could be entirely blameless.
In fact this happened to me many many years ago. I was working for a “large metropolitian newspaper” as a Manager. I got a new manager (hired from outside). He was a clone of Rush Limbaugh- way of speaking, size, everything. He accused me of “trying to upsurp his authority”, and fired me and one other Manager on the spot for “insubordination”. The Company backed him 100% (that was their polciy) even though I had a spotless record, with a folder full of customer accolades. “Rush” then fired another manager, and one more transferred out, leaving him with a cadre of all new managers, and one female manager (who was later to file a sexual harrassment lawsuit, so we know why he kept her around). Production plummeted, complaints went up, and so after the suit- they fired “Rush” for “Mismanagement”. (Rush was a raving paranoid it seems). But the paper not only didn’t hire us back, they fought our claims for benefits tooth & nail.
So- the only reason we were fired was because “Rush” made shit up. Our complaints about him just made upper management think that we really were insubordinate. :rolleyes:
Years later, one of the “scions” of the newspaper family ran into me, and warmly greeted me and apologized- offered me a job that woudl have been a promotion over the job I had been fired from. I had a nice job, so I delcined- but I also declined as it could happen again.
So- really- all you know is when a manager claims he has a “bad employee” is the manager’s story. The manager can “write up” or “document” the empoyee for “problems” that really only happened in the manager tiny paranoid brain. Or- maybe the manager is right, and the employee is the bad 'un. But you really don’t know do you? Thus, unless the employee is stealing or something, it’s best to just “let them go” with benefits, etc. “Firing” is a bad idea.
Firing can be immoral - if done as revenge, or at the whim of an evil boss. But firing can be morally positive, if done to protect other workers from a dangerous employee, or an anti-social one. There are some people I don’t feel too much empathy for.
Look, the benefit of free enterprise is improving the wealth and happiness of all by increasing economic efficiency. Part of this involves having each job filled by the person best suited to do it. If things go too far out of whack, and an employee does not voluntarily look for a new job, firing might be necessary. And yes, I agree that society should support people during the transition, probably better than we do today. But that would just reduce the social costs of firing, not eliminate it.
I suspect that they are being employed thorugh some bleeding heart liberal work-for -the-mentally-disabled program for such people, which I am sure would disgust you, and which you would quickly terminate if you had the power, so your point is moot.
[QUOTE=hannable1975]
[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.
Actually, if you fire employees without a paper trail of some kind, you may wind up paying unemployment compensation, and they haven’t committed an egregious offense, or there have been no witnesses to or evidence of that offense, you’ll probably wind up paying unemployment compensation. As you point out, you have to cross your Ts and dot your Is.
I haven’t advocated an end to firings. This thread was started as a survey, then people called me out on my opinions on the topic and it wound up in GD. I have stated that I dislike firings, but have proposed no particular plan for handling them just yet.
A very good point. But such warnings only mean that 9 out of 10 employees will take the hint and start looking for a job. It doesn’t mean they’ll find one. If that were the case, I don’t think that employment issues would be so hotly debated here.
My question for you:
A company fires an employee for good reason, whatever that reason may be.
That company then hires someone else to fill the fired employee’s former position.
One person is added to the rolls of the unemployed, and one is subtracted, so the total remains the same. One person feels depressed, one person feels elated. From a societal perspective, doesn’t this balance the scales?
To be fair, if you’re middle-aged and you have a house and a family to support, there are an awful lot of low-paying jobs that just won’t even come close to covering basics like your mortgage and so forth. If you’re focussed on trying to keep your home, you might not find $8 an hour for 30 hours a week at K-Mart or McDonald’s all that appealing.
I’ve never had to fire anyone. I’ve had to issue a few Official Reprimands, but they always seemed to work. I’ve been lucky, I’ll admit it. But you know what you ought to admit? That you would have found firing Single Mom one HELL of a lot easier if there were an adequate safety net out there for the unemployed. And their kids.
I’m sure you have reasons for your opinion, but you somehow haven’t voiced them.
Agreed, but I was getting tired of hearng about all the careworn saints looking out for their wayward employees …
If you fire employees without a paper trail, or for reasons other than just cause, you are making bad business decisions. Recruiting and training are far more expensive than attempts at correction.
This isn’t a debate. This is a dozen or so people trying to help you with your ‘pie-in-the-sky’ view. I’ve yet to see anyone taking your side; that ‘European Method’ stuff was the closest.
Let’s review. We’ve discussed several types of involuntary job separation. The one most people would object to would be fired/released for no cause other than one is a Patriots fan. Bad business by the employer, bad situation for the (former) employee. Even worse if the bad employer fudges records to withhold insurance.
Second, we have fired/released for cause; the ‘Joan’ scenario. This great travesty to soceity doesn’t occur; the job is not lost. Someone else gets the job, at cost to the employer.
Third would be layoffs / RIFs. Neither employer, employee, or soceity ‘wins’ in these cases.
Did I miss one? Please let me know.
Now, if you wish to argue that our social safety net for people in categories one and three is insufficient, that is totally separate from the topic of firings. There we might find some common ground; I believe there is room for improvement, although I doubt I’d believe we should do as much as you would propose.
Situation one is where we need better laws, and better business ethics.
As to “Joan”- what exactly was the “cause” for which she was fired? 
Being “really, really annoying?” Being a big mouth bitch? Neither is "cause’ in this state. (IANAL, YMMV). Insubordination is, but that really is disobeying a direct order (on something releating to job duties). Now, I have said that Maureen was right to get rid of Joan as Joan was apparently causing Maureen work and stress beyond Joan’s contribution to the company. But fired “for cause”? I didn’t see it.
Well, I did say “fired / released”, due to your earlier post delineating CA law on the difference. I say she was fired, you say she was released, either way she is now unemployed. It was ‘for cause’ because she was a toxic employee who refused to change her ways. Whether it was ‘for cause’ as defined by CA, I’m not even going to speculate.
IMNSHO, ethics cannot be easily taught to adults. By that time, it’s too late. If a bad employer changes, I’m more inclined to believe it’s because treating employees better increases profits. And I’d prefer that government not try and codify all human interaction. Educate and train people, and provide better job referral services for those that need it, but don’t keep throwing poorly thought out laws at every situation. I know you said ‘better’ laws, but the pragmatist in me doesn’t see better laws coming out of DC.