Employment Morality: Employee and Employer Obligations

Introduction: What Employer and Employee Owe Each Other

Before entering into an employment contract, an employee's first concern is usually to gain a living wage, then to acquire experience in a particular profession, and perhaps finally to achieve advancement within a corporate structure, industry, or trade. An employer's main concern in hiring is typically whether the employee can perform the job, whether he or she will merit the wage offered, and whether he or she will remain for the necessary hours and duration. However, once the employee has committed to work and the employer has committed to pay, the relationship and its ratio of obligations inevitably grows murkier. What obligation does the employer have to the quality of life of the employee—and to enhancing the employee's experience—when, as in an internship or apprenticeship, the employee accepts a lower wage in exchange for education?

Locke's Philosophy of Freedom and the Employment Relationship

The British philosopher John Locke, in his 1690 work Two Treatises of Government, argues against the notion that the legitimate enforcement powers of government derive from an analogy to the parental power of a father over his children. In other words, all human beings should be free to choose their livelihoods and the courses of their lives, for better or for ill. From an American perspective—both today and during the Revolutionary War era in which Benjamin Franklin wrote his Autobiography—Locke's condemnation of tyranny was a welcome philosophy regarding the governance of the state. Locke denied the paternalistic power of the king to confine the economic fates of all people to lower, fixed stations in life.

However, if one takes Locke's views regarding freedom to their logical extension in the economic rather than the political realm, no long-standing employer would bear any moral obligation to pay a pension to employees, even if those 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 could—according to the denial of any employer authority in loco parentis (in the place of a parent)—be dismissed without further obligation.

Market Failures and the Limits of a Free Marketplace

One could argue that employees have the right to choose employers based on retirement packages, pensions, and settlement terms, and that marketplace competition alone should determine these benefits rather than any fixed moral relation between employer and employee. Employees in a free society must also take responsibility for their own economic success and leave an employer who does not fairly remunerate their contribution. However, recent debacles such as the Enron scandal—in which retirement funds were exhausted through no fault of the retiring employees—highlight the fact that some obligation to provide for employees must exist once those employees have spent their youth and hard work for a company and can no longer, due to age and health, offer the same services.

Moreover, employee knowledge of a firm's internal workings is often imperfect, and their individual actions may have little to do with the relative success or failure of the corporation. In such instances, a governmental authority may need to intervene—or, preferably, the employer should have taken steps to protect the employee before government power became necessary, to return to Locke's framework.

In Locke's age of master and servant, the servant gave everything to the master in hopes of care at the end of his or her tenure through an agreed social contract. Rejecting the lack of advancement inherent in such arrangements, Locke describes workplace relationships with the same rhetoric of freedom he applies to governance. He argues that all men and women should be able to market the fruits of their own labor. Because of his fear of monarchical tyranny, he stresses the dangers of a controlled marketplace—one with fixed obstacles to entering trade, leaving class-based positions, or obtaining higher education through merit. As money drives the wheels of trade, Locke also warns against state interference in commerce. Yet what happens when workers' rights in the free marketplace are infringed through industry collusion—for instance, through monopolistic wage-setting—or, as illustrated in Benjamin Franklin's life, when an employer does not honor his or her contractual obligation to provide wages or education?

Conclusion: Striking a Balance Between Freedom and Obligation

Perhaps the legitimate relationship between employee and employer is therefore one of balance. The government, despite Locke's objections, must legally intervene when contractual obligations regarding wages or benefits are not honored by employers. At the same time, employees must ultimately understand that employers do not inherently have the best interests of their workers at heart—however morally superior such a position would be—and that employees owe their employer only their working hours and contracted labor. Employees must take responsibility and ownership of their own economic wellbeing, personal development, and long-term economic future.

Works Cited

Franklin, Benjamin. "From the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin." 1723.

Franklin, Benjamin. "Benjamin Franklin, How I Became a Printer in Philadelphia."

Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. 1690.

Winthrop, John. "A Modell of Christian Charity." 1630.

Winthrop, John. "A Little Speech on Liberty." 1645.