John Locke's political philosophy and influence

John Locke

Employment -- the Morality of the Contract between Employee and Employer

Before entering into a contract for employment, an employees' first concern is usually to gain a living wage, then to gain experience in a particular profession, and perhaps finally to gain advancement within a particular corporate structure, industry, or trade. An employer's main concern in hiring an employee is usually if the employee can perform the job the employee is being hired to perform, if he or she will be deserving of the wage he or she is will be paid, and if he or she will stay for the necessary hours and period of time. However, once the employee has made a commitment to work and the employer has made a commitment to pay the employee for a period of time, the relationship and ratio of obligations invariably grows murkier. What obligation does the employer have to the life quality of the employee and to enhance the employee's experiences, if the employee (such as in an internship or an apprenticeship) expects an education in return for accepting a lower wage?

The democratic British philosopher John Locke, in his 1680 essay on "Two Treatises of Government" writes to deny that legitimate enforcement powers of government upon the populace comes from he analogical parental power of a father over his children. In other words, all human beings should be free to choose their livelihoods and courses of their lives, for better or for ill. From an American perspective of today and the Revolutionary War era during which Benjamin Franklin wrote his Autobiography, Locke's condemnation of tyranny was a welcome philosophy from the point-of-view of governance of the state. Locke denied the paternalistic power of the king keep the economic fates of all in lower, proper stations. However, to take Locke's views regarding freedom to their logical extension in the economic rather than the political realm, no long-standing employer would have any moral obligation to pay a pension to his or her employees, even if the employees had worked for the company for most of their lives. When an employee was no longer useful in the service he or she had been contracted to perform, he or she, according to the denial of any employer power "in loco parentis," or in the place of the parent, could be fired.

Of course, one could argue that an employee has the right to chose employers based on retirement packages, pensions, and settlements, and the competition of the marketplace alone should determine this, rather than any sense of legitimate relations between "master" and "servant" that should parallel the relationship between employer and employee. Also, employees in a free society had to take responsibility for their own economic success and livelihood and leave an unfair employer that did not remunerate fairly their contribution. However, recent debacles such as that at Enron, where retirement funds have been exhausted, due to no fault of the retiring employees highlight the fact that there must be some obligation to provide for employees, once they have 'spent' their youth and hard work for a company and can no longer, because of health and age, offer them the same services in their advanced and decrepit age. Also, employee knowledge of a firm or corporate structure is often imperfect, and their actions may have nothing to do with the relative failure or success of that corporation. In such instances, a governmental authority may have to step in -- or preferably, the employer should have taken steps to protect the employee before the government's power needed to become involved, to return to Locke's view.

Of course, in Locke's age of master and servant, a servant gave and owned all to the master, with the hopes of care in an agreed social contract at the end of his or her tenure. Disliking the lack of advancement inherent in such security, Locke describes workplace relationships with the same rhetoric of freedom in which he speaks of governance. He states that all men and women should be able to market the fruits of their own labors. Because of his fear of monarchial tyranny, he stresses the dangers of a controlled marketplace, with obstacles to entering trade or leaving class-based positions or obtaining higher education through merit that are fixed by the by law. As money turns the wheels of trade he also inveighs against interference of the state in matters of commerce. However, what happens when the rights of the workers in the free marketplace are infringed upon through industry collusion in the form of a monopolistic setting of wages, for instance, or, as outlined in Benjamin Franklin's own life, when an employer does not honor his or her contract to provide wages or education to an employee?

Of Franklin's tenure in bonded servitude, he reflected "I fancy his harsh and tyrannical treatment of me might be a means of impressing me with that aversion to arbitrary power that has stuck to me through my whole life." (Franklin, 1723) Like Locke, the tyranny of bondage caused Franklin to hate the monarchical systems of governance. But Franklin, more astutely than Locke, noted how without proper regulation, a completely free and unfettered market could produce tyranny just as overwhelming as that exercised by a tyrant.

Of course, one could state that Franklin's experience was not that of a free market. Contracts regarding apprenticeship, where individuals labored in exchange for room, board, and knowledge necessary to enter a trade in a form of virtual indentured servitude were open to much exploitation, as is evidenced in Franklin's case, and in such cases the ethical notions of 'in loco parentis' seem complex -- on one hand, the bond is moral for a young man's education, on the other hand it is a contract regarding employment and wages. Franklin was forced into his experience by a parent whom believed he must learn a trade to survive, and many young men gritted their teeth and forced themselves to endure privation with the hopes of economic returns later on. Regardless, the existence of indentured servitude in a supposed free market shows that the 'hands off attitude' advocated by Lock and Smith does not automatically result in a fair and equitable 'set point' of returns on one's investment of time on behalf of one's employer. Such an attitude, albeit not as extreme as expressed by Franklin, might be found in the minds and hearts of some interns today, forced to 'make copies' for little pay and even less education.