Employment and Employee Rights

by Patricia H. Werhane, Norman E. Bowie, Tara J. Radin

Employment and Employee Rights addresses the issue of rights in the workplace. Although much of the literature in this field focuses on employee rights, this volume considers the issue from the perspective of both employees and employers.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published June 27, 2003

About the author

Patricia Hogue Werhane

Reviews

[Caleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a legal text, this book offers a novel moral theory of employee rights. The authors draw upon Rainer Forst notion of the "right to justification," the right to be given reasons. While this view is clearly of Kantian provenance, the authors go to great lengths in order to avoid any sense that an adequate theory of employee rights involves an abstract (and potentially contentless) appeal to moral personhood. Instead they weave this notion of a right to justification into the fabric of the firm, attempting to show how a range of employee rights that give content to this notion of moral personhood both follows from the structure of the employee relationship and potentially contribute to the success of the firm, showing in Hegel's words, that pereat mundus need not follow from fiat justitia. While there are many facets of the argument two stand out. One is the idea that employee rights flow directly from the employment relationship wherein loyalty (not merely compliance) is demanded of the employee. Second, the authors attempt to redescribe the employment relationship in terms of the idea of professionalism, in order to provide a broader base for employee rights. While these are arguments are interesting and at times compelling, they could be better developed in terms of recent developments in business ethics drawing upon MacIntyre's notions of practices and networks of giving receiving within organizations.