The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on what employers owe their workers.
We have an employee we would like to have fired months ago because of his lack of reliability and poor work ethic. He has been with our company for almost a decade — since he graduated from college — but his productivity and commitment have been declining for a long time. We knew his father was dying of cancer and therefore decided not to fire him during this difficult period. The problems with his work ethic, however, long predated that illness. His father has now died. How long do we need to wait before we can let him go?
We have no reason to believe that his poor work performance had anything to do with his father’s illness and no reason to believe that it will improve. We care about him as a person and don’t want to be callous, but I truly believe that the best thing we can do for him is to let him go; he could find a place that’s a better match. I should also point out that with his off-the-charts intelligence and tremendous experience, it should be easy for him to find another job in our industry. — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist:
The central role of employment in a modern life means that people shouldn’t be fired without sufficient reason. As the philosopher Elizabeth Anderson has argued, a company has duties to its employees that derive from the fact that it exercises power over them, just as a state has duties to its citizens that derive from the fact that it exercises power over them. That is what’s wrong with the default legal assumption in almost all U.S. states that employment is “at will” and that, in the absence of a contract, we can be let go without any reason. (There are, to be sure, a medley of legally impermissible reasons for firing people — pregnancy, race, gender, religion, disability status, refusal to break the law, for example — though the details vary by state.)
Still, your central task, in supervising an employee, is to ensure that he is actually doing the job to the standard required. Your letter suggests that you have shown proper concern for him; in fact, you have done more than many companies would and, at least in some respects, more than you had a duty to do. I assume that you’ve told him clearly what you think is wrong with his performance and have allowed him an opportunity to improve. Giving him notice would then be acceptable; bad employees put a burden on good ones. I can’t tell you what would count as a decent post-bereavement interval — a few weeks? a couple of months? — but you’ll have to balance your firm’s needs with your sense of compassion, and that’s always a difficult business.
Readers Respond
The previous newsletter’s question was from an American parent asking about the ethics of sending an 8-year-old adopted son’s DNA to a genetic ancestry database in the hope of finding his biological parents in China. The parent wrote: “A few years ago, I began to take an interest in locating his birthparents. … He has [also] expressed some interest in locating his birth family, and he has a right to understand his origins. I have enough concern about privacy, however, that DNA ancestry is not something I would choose to do for myself. … What should I do?”
In his response, the Ethicist noted: “Your odds of success would seem to be extremely low in any case. The Nanchang Project, which aims to reconnect adoptees with their families in China, [only just] had its first successful match. … It’s true that there are effectively no restrictions on the Chinese government’s use of genetic data. But assuming that your son is planning to live outside China, you may not need to worry much. … Once you’ve got a firm sense of options, you can talk about them with your 8-year-old. Then it’s up to you whether to get out the swab.” (Reread the full question and answer here.)
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As a Chinese adoptee, I strongly urge you to consider postponing this decision until your child is older. His feelings about his adoption experience will likely morph with time, and it should be up to him to determine how, when and to what extent he engages with his heritage. The best way you can support him is to let him lead. — Sarah
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The Ethicist’s response seemed to veer into the practicalities of testing more than the ethics of doing it. Unless there is evidence of immediate medical need, this is a decision that should be made by the child. The adoptive parent has no skin in this game — beyond curiosity — and it is an irreversible action. Genetic information cannot be retroactively withheld once divulged. — David
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Another benefit to testing your son could be to find a match for a sibling. Yes, he is young. But go for it! I have a full sibling, albeit not international, and am still looking for a half sibling. By searching now, it normalizes the conversation from a young age. — Beverly
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As both an adoptee and adoptive mother, I’ve found that gaining medical knowledge is a surefire contribution to quality of life. Money spent on a birth parent search via DNA would be better spent on having his DNA sequenced and checked for genetically linked diseases. None of us adoptees have real health records, nor do we know how our biological relatives died. Direct your money there. — Janet
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We adopted a daughter from South Korea over 23 years ago. Our feeling was that any desire to locate her birth parents needed to be driven by her, not our own interests. It takes a number of years for an adopted child to understand not only what they really want, but also what the repercussions are for the “found” family. Be careful that your interest doesn’t outweigh — or outpace — your child’s. — Deb
Kwame Anthony Appiah teaches philosophy at N.Y.U. His books include “Cosmopolitanism,” “The Honor Code” and “The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity.” To submit a query: Send an email to ethicist@nytimes.com.
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