4 ms·

I think the immediate problem with setting this up as a legal preceding is that it gives everyone involved a fundamentally wrong idea. It suggests that the emp

by ben509 8y ago

I think the immediate problem with setting this up as a legal preceding is that it gives everyone involved a fundamentally wrong idea. It suggests that the employee is on trial, but you can't be on trial if your performance is poor because poor performance is not a crime. Yes, I'm sure everyone involved understands academically that it's not, but reading the article, the comments here, I think the internalized intuition at work is casting this as a matter of justice. Hiring, retention and firing are not mechanisms to enforce some sort of justice, they're about ensuring that employment is mutually beneficial. It's extremely hard for someone looking at being fired to have this kind of detached view of it, especially if you're already inclined to view the world in terms of justice, but you shouldn't because it will mess with your head. The first thing you want to do if you leave a job for any reason is move on, not feel like you've been exiled or ostracized. And if you come into an interview with a chip on your shoulder, that makes it significantly harder to get a new job and move on. And this is not just a problem employees have, many managers are prone to criminalize employees who don't do well or hold grudges against people. That leads to capricious behavior and corrosive office politics, and you do not want them in leadership roles.

walshemj 8y ago
You are I think jumping to your conceived ideas about how labor law works if labor law and precedent says that this is how it is. You have been in the army so during your time you were employed and the UMJC is a legal system is it not?
- ryanmarsh 8y ago
  The employment status of a soldier is very different than an at-will employee, not to mention the differing nature of the work...
  - ben509 8y ago
    I know, we had demo day last week. Turns out it's short for "demonstration," not "demolition." :-(
- ben509 8y ago
  IANAL, so I may have some preconceived notions, so I'll just lay them out. UCMJ is absolutely a legal system, and it deals with punishments for criminal actions. Most of the UCMJ is regular criminal law[1] covering everything from arson to rape to petty theft. (For non-Americans: criminal law is generally legislated and enforced at the state level, but military bases are under US jurisdiction.) The UCMJ does elevate some bad performance to criminal status: sleeping on guard duty, malingering, disrespect to officers, etc. But the UCMJ says those things are crimes and punishes them as crimes, though it's far less dramatic than it sounds.[2] Employment contracts in the US are generally "at will," so the remedy your employer has if you're not doing your job is to fire you. Your remedy if you don't like your job is to quit. For either side to be subject to a tort (getting sued) there has to be a breach of contract, which means there was a contract you signed or at least discussed with your employer. For you to be subject to criminal penalties, you usually have to have intentionally caused harm to someone. So if you're a salaried employee, have you ever signed a contract guaranteeing some level of performance? In any of the cases we're discussing, are people being sued for monetary damages? It happens; if you're an actor you have to complete some number of shows, but most 9 to 5 jobs aren't like that. If there's no contract where an employee is promising a level of performance, their performance is not even a civil case, let alone a criminal case. And that's where my claim that it's wrongheaded to put this in terms of justice. It's simply not the case that doing a bad job is something that we'd normally put someone on trial for. While courts are good at dispassionately hearing evidence and so forth, non-lawyers don't view trials dispassionately! They view them as a morality play where the righteous vanquish the wicked, which is completely inappropriate. [1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/subtitle-A/part-II/chapter-47/subchapter-X https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/subtitle-A/part-I... [2]: https://www.thebalancecareers.com/what-is-an-article-15-3354210 https://www.thebalancecareers.com/what-is-an-article-15-3354...
ryanmarsh 8y ago
Were you in the 509th PIR?
- ben509 8y ago
  Yup, spent 5 years in Ft Polk...
  - ryanmarsh 8y ago
    Deployed with Geronimo in '04. Email's in my bio if you want to connect.
TheCoelacanth 8y ago
Trials are not necessarily about criminal matters. Civil matters are also settled in trials. It doesn't seem inherently unreasonable to have some process to let an employee argue that they were not given a reasonable chance to meet the demands of the job or that they actually were meeting the demands of the job and for the firing manager to argue that they were given a reasonable chance to meet the demands of the job and still were not meeting it.

by ben509 8y ago

walshemj 8y ago

You are I think jumping to your conceived ideas about how labor law works if labor law and precedent says that this is how it is. You have been in the army so during your time you were employed and the UMJC is a legal system is it not?

ryanmarsh 8y ago
The employment status of a soldier is very different than an at-will employee, not to mention the differing nature of the work...
- ben509 8y ago
  I know, we had demo day last week. Turns out it's short for "demonstration," not "demolition." :-(
ben509 8y ago
IANAL, so I may have some preconceived notions, so I'll just lay them out. UCMJ is absolutely a legal system, and it deals with punishments for criminal actions. Most of the UCMJ is regular criminal law[1] covering everything from arson to rape to petty theft. (For non-Americans: criminal law is generally legislated and enforced at the state level, but military bases are under US jurisdiction.) The UCMJ does elevate some bad performance to criminal status: sleeping on guard duty, malingering, disrespect to officers, etc. But the UCMJ says those things are crimes and punishes them as crimes, though it's far less dramatic than it sounds.[2] Employment contracts in the US are generally "at will," so the remedy your employer has if you're not doing your job is to fire you. Your remedy if you don't like your job is to quit. For either side to be subject to a tort (getting sued) there has to be a breach of contract, which means there was a contract you signed or at least discussed with your employer. For you to be subject to criminal penalties, you usually have to have intentionally caused harm to someone. So if you're a salaried employee, have you ever signed a contract guaranteeing some level of performance? In any of the cases we're discussing, are people being sued for monetary damages? It happens; if you're an actor you have to complete some number of shows, but most 9 to 5 jobs aren't like that. If there's no contract where an employee is promising a level of performance, their performance is not even a civil case, let alone a criminal case. And that's where my claim that it's wrongheaded to put this in terms of justice. It's simply not the case that doing a bad job is something that we'd normally put someone on trial for. While courts are good at dispassionately hearing evidence and so forth, non-lawyers don't view trials dispassionately! They view them as a morality play where the righteous vanquish the wicked, which is completely inappropriate. [1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/subtitle-A/part-II/chapter-47/subchapter-X https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/subtitle-A/part-I... [2]: https://www.thebalancecareers.com/what-is-an-article-15-3354210 https://www.thebalancecareers.com/what-is-an-article-15-3354...

ryanmarsh 8y ago

Were you in the 509th PIR?

ben509 8y ago
Yup, spent 5 years in Ft Polk...
- ryanmarsh 8y ago
  Deployed with Geronimo in '04. Email's in my bio if you want to connect.

TheCoelacanth 8y ago

Trials are not necessarily about criminal matters. Civil matters are also settled in trials. It doesn't seem inherently unreasonable to have some process to let an employee argue that they were not given a reasonable chance to meet the demands of the job or that they actually were meeting the demands of the job and for the firing manager to argue that they were given a reasonable chance to meet the demands of the job and still were not meeting it.