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The Excuse Factory
In "The Litigation Explosion", Walter Olson exposed the irrational incentives within the legal system that have made America the world's most litigious society. Now Olson has trained his considerable investigative talents on another aspect of the legal system: employment law. "The Excuse Factory" goes right to the heart of the increasingly absurd American workplace, showing how Kafkaesque employment laws make it nearly impossible to fire even the most incompetent and unmotivated workers. Employers have become understandably nervous about firing someone lest it open them up to a lawsuit, no matter how frivolous. They would rather tolerate bad employees than remove them-- a choice that has profound implications for the future of business, the American economy, and our collective mental health.
From the merely annoying, like the chronically late secretary, to the extremely dangerous, like the alcoholic airline pilot, Olson shows how the legal system coddles those who least deserve it. In the name of protecting victims of discrimination with laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act and the 1991 Civil Rights Act, we have made it tremendously difficult just to get people to do their jobs.
Olson gives eloquent voice to this mounting workplace crisis. As the corporate environment degenerates to the lowest common denominator, the frustration and anger among the majority of workers who do pull their own weight is palpable. Enshrining mediocrity in the workplace imposes high costs on society-- costs reflected in lost jobs, lost wages, reduced safety, and rising aggravation.
"The Excuse Factory" will spur outrage and spark a national debate about the role of government in the workplace. Olson's expose is certain to shake up the legal industry, rattle government regulators, and cause thousands of workers and managers to nod in vigorous agreement.
From the merely annoying, like the chronically late secretary, to the extremely dangerous, like the alcoholic airline pilot, Olson shows how the legal system coddles those who least deserve it. In the name of protecting victims of discrimination with laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act and the 1991 Civil Rights Act, we have made it tremendously difficult just to get people to do their jobs.
Olson gives eloquent voice to this mounting workplace crisis. As the corporate environment degenerates to the lowest common denominator, the frustration and anger among the majority of workers who do pull their own weight is palpable. Enshrining mediocrity in the workplace imposes high costs on society-- costs reflected in lost jobs, lost wages, reduced safety, and rising aggravation.
"The Excuse Factory" will spur outrage and spark a national debate about the role of government in the workplace. Olson's expose is certain to shake up the legal industry, rattle government regulators, and cause thousands of workers and managers to nod in vigorous agreement.
- GenresLaw
378 pages, Hardcover
First published June 3, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 25, 2024
A CONSERVATIVE CRITIQUE OF EMPLOYMENT LAW ABUSES
At the time this book was written in 1997, Walter Olsen was a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and contributing editor to Reason magazine. He also wrote the book 'The Litigation Explosion: What Happened When America Unleashed the Lawsuit.'
He said in the Introduction, "This book is a broad critical overview of the new employment law... it examines the development of legal doctrine in courts, in agencies such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in Congress, and elsewhere... This book will also try to show that in its zeal to provide a remedy for everything it perceives as wrong at work, our law has too often undercut the quest for competence and excellence."
He notes that "Only 8 percent of employment complaints under the law have come from wheelchair users, and a mere 3 percent from the deaf or blind, bringing the total for these traditional disabilities to 14 percent, or one in six claims. The larger categories are the less visible or measurable impairments: 19 percent cite back problems, 12 percent neurological woes, and 12 percent emotional/psychological ailments, with substantial overlaps and gray areas between all three categories." (Pg. 114)
He observes that a study "found that direct, countable costs of the new common-law wrongful-firing doctrines did not seem all that high: perhaps only a tenth of 1 percent of the nation's total wage bill, averaging out to $100 per dismissed worker nationwide. Yet in practice... employers behaved as if the indirect costs of being sued were 100 times as important to them as the direct costs." (Pg. 294-295)
He argues, "One kind of job likely to come under legal pressure is what has been called the high-commitment workplace... America still excels at generating the software 'skunk works' full of whiz kids trying to deliver on deadline, the messy ad agency where creative types yell at each other, the go-getting sales force that gets so caught up in team spirit that it takes on the air of a religious cult. Not many of these places can cope well with a newcomer, fully imbued with workplace-rights ideology, who demands a precise job description from day one, construes hazing as infliction of emotional distress and defamation, insists that office policies be preannounced and enforced to the letter, and plans on taking advantage of legal scheduling rights..." (Pg. 303-304)
A provocative book, it is well worth reading, whether or not one agrees with everything Olson says.
At the time this book was written in 1997, Walter Olsen was a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and contributing editor to Reason magazine. He also wrote the book 'The Litigation Explosion: What Happened When America Unleashed the Lawsuit.'
He said in the Introduction, "This book is a broad critical overview of the new employment law... it examines the development of legal doctrine in courts, in agencies such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in Congress, and elsewhere... This book will also try to show that in its zeal to provide a remedy for everything it perceives as wrong at work, our law has too often undercut the quest for competence and excellence."
He notes that "Only 8 percent of employment complaints under the law have come from wheelchair users, and a mere 3 percent from the deaf or blind, bringing the total for these traditional disabilities to 14 percent, or one in six claims. The larger categories are the less visible or measurable impairments: 19 percent cite back problems, 12 percent neurological woes, and 12 percent emotional/psychological ailments, with substantial overlaps and gray areas between all three categories." (Pg. 114)
He observes that a study "found that direct, countable costs of the new common-law wrongful-firing doctrines did not seem all that high: perhaps only a tenth of 1 percent of the nation's total wage bill, averaging out to $100 per dismissed worker nationwide. Yet in practice... employers behaved as if the indirect costs of being sued were 100 times as important to them as the direct costs." (Pg. 294-295)
He argues, "One kind of job likely to come under legal pressure is what has been called the high-commitment workplace... America still excels at generating the software 'skunk works' full of whiz kids trying to deliver on deadline, the messy ad agency where creative types yell at each other, the go-getting sales force that gets so caught up in team spirit that it takes on the air of a religious cult. Not many of these places can cope well with a newcomer, fully imbued with workplace-rights ideology, who demands a precise job description from day one, construes hazing as infliction of emotional distress and defamation, insists that office policies be preannounced and enforced to the letter, and plans on taking advantage of legal scheduling rights..." (Pg. 303-304)
A provocative book, it is well worth reading, whether or not one agrees with everything Olson says.
January 9, 2019
Anyone can take a wide-ranging collection of laws and find examples of ways they've been misused. Fewer can do it in such entertaining style. This is a story about lawyers, well-intentioned or not, ignoring things they should know about the world (e.g. the fact that society does benefit from jobs being done well) and hoping that everything works out anyway. In the process, they stomp on women, men, blacks, whites, Koreans (and probably most other American ethnic groups), unions, bosses, and common sense.
I'm not sure I've ever taken as many notes in any other book, ever. If I tried to list even a tenth of the examples that drew me in, this review would be too long. But I'll try to choose three where my reaction was intense enough that, at the time, I could find no words, such that my notes read as something like "(silent flailing of the arms)":
- Thanks to prohibitions against "age discrimination", airlines have sometimes been forced to hire pilots in their late fifties, even though commercial pilots must retire at the age of sixty.
- "Another federal law required many subsidized housing projects for the elderly to admit the disabled of all ages; youngsters whose 'disabilities' consisted of alcohol and drug addiction moved in and went on cat-among-the-pigeons crime sprees among the luckless elders."
- "City hall officials defending tests [of physical fitness for firefighters] say 'speed is critical' in fighting fires, reported the New York Times. In the best tradition of unbiased, we-take-no-sides journalism, it added, 'Opponents argue that it is not.'"
The book isn't perfect; a few of Olson's complaints rang false to me, and he never proves that the rise of employment law did substantial damage to the economy*. But he does prove a lot of scary things about the court system, and about the ability of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to hate pretty much anyone (so long as they've had the bad luck to be the cause of someone's firing, even if that someone ran them over with a bus). And his citations checked out every time I looked, even when I really, really hoped they wouldn't.
* Despite this lack of proof, I'd guess that the types of lawsuits Olson discusses, and the law's crackdown on employers sharing honest information with each other during the hiring process, have made a sizable contribution to American cost disease.
I'm not sure I've ever taken as many notes in any other book, ever. If I tried to list even a tenth of the examples that drew me in, this review would be too long. But I'll try to choose three where my reaction was intense enough that, at the time, I could find no words, such that my notes read as something like "(silent flailing of the arms)":
- Thanks to prohibitions against "age discrimination", airlines have sometimes been forced to hire pilots in their late fifties, even though commercial pilots must retire at the age of sixty.
- "Another federal law required many subsidized housing projects for the elderly to admit the disabled of all ages; youngsters whose 'disabilities' consisted of alcohol and drug addiction moved in and went on cat-among-the-pigeons crime sprees among the luckless elders."
- "City hall officials defending tests [of physical fitness for firefighters] say 'speed is critical' in fighting fires, reported the New York Times. In the best tradition of unbiased, we-take-no-sides journalism, it added, 'Opponents argue that it is not.'"
The book isn't perfect; a few of Olson's complaints rang false to me, and he never proves that the rise of employment law did substantial damage to the economy*. But he does prove a lot of scary things about the court system, and about the ability of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to hate pretty much anyone (so long as they've had the bad luck to be the cause of someone's firing, even if that someone ran them over with a bus). And his citations checked out every time I looked, even when I really, really hoped they wouldn't.
* Despite this lack of proof, I'd guess that the types of lawsuits Olson discusses, and the law's crackdown on employers sharing honest information with each other during the hiring process, have made a sizable contribution to American cost disease.
February 10, 2015
Excellent treatment of what ADA, Family Leave, age laws have been doing to the workplace; feathering lawyers nests, etc.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews