Dd/MM/Yy Essay Example

I don’t know how this happens but sometimes discovering something new brings more questions than answers. It probably should be this way because this means you haven’t stayed indifferent, you challenge and try to learn more. We all know that truth is born of arguments and the most sincere discussion we probably have with ourselves when trying to research a topic. There is hardly any aspect of business sphere that has no controversies if it touches upon harmonization of interests that are conflicting in the first place.
Granting rights to anyone has always meant lying duty and responsibility on somebody else’s shoulders: if you want to take something – you have to give something else in return. What moral right do I have to any kind of entitlement if I don’t want to carry out my own duties? This was a novelty to me to discover that drug and alcohol abuse are accountable for almost a half of all fatal events and severe injuries in the workplace. How can we speak of any positive trends in the workplace safety if employees neglect their basic self-protection? Some other cause-and-effect relationships are not less questionable. Especially this concerns employees’ mortality at work that is reported to have become a downward trend in the US since 1970. Was this triggered by Occupational Safety and Health Act that passed that year, by improvement of technical characteristics of companies’ facilities, relocation of factories to developing countries or any other reasons? Working conditions on factories in many developing countries still remain a serious matter and in addition to three fair labor standards presented in Chapter 16 I would add one measure that Norwegian minister of finance considers to be an effective one in the fight against multinationals that tolerate abuses of labor rights. Halverson is of an opinion that “ownership of companies is the most important way to have influence” and thus governments can use restrictions regarding where national companies can invest (Walmart case) as an effective tool for influence on employee-corporation relationships (Landler). If this works for one country, maybe other also should give it a try?
Many issues like drug, honesty and theft testing have more relevance to ethical issues and I believe they should be addressed in a way that doesn’t undermine established level of trust within organization. Same can be said about privacy policy. Of course any company wants to have a certain level of control and monitoring, however the sole idea of how difficult it is to safeguard against possible interference in rather frightening. How to strike a balance for a company to interfere just enough to guarantee its own protection and employees’ work productivity and not overstep the bounds?
Debated topics like labor unions require some research in order to understand their current position and weight. The number of employees engaged into trade unions has declined since the mid-1950s, especially in private sector, but underlying causes still are in question. Was that mainly due to the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 – federal law that was not friendly towards unions (Hiltzik) or due to increased competition and new economic conditions (Soltas)? The reasons lie somewhere in the borderland between them and I am convinced that labor unions though not efficient in their current condition should not just disappear but be replaced by creations that can address questions of present interest.
Still, new ways of establishment of fair labor standards call for joint measures that will compensate for shortcomings of each of them. Multinationals do not always care about working conditions for employees on overseas factories and taking into account lower standards and compliance control in developing countries, this part of the chapter is the most challenging and the most interesting for further research. How to make the companies uphold the code? And even the more important: how to make them want to uphold the code? Answers to these questions require constant reconsideration as consistent with continual changes.

Works cited

Hiltzik, Michael. 'What Really Caused The Decline Of American Unions?'. Los Angeles Times 2014. Web. 13 Feb. 2015.
Landler, Mark. 'Selling Oil Is Easier Than Investing Ethically, Norway Finds'. The New York Times 2007. Web. 13 Feb. 2015.
Soltas, Evan. 'Is The U.S. Better Off Without Unions?'. Bloomberg View 2014. Web. 13 Feb. 2015.