Ethics Newsline®

“The great man presides over all his states of consciousness with obstinate rigor.”

– Leonardo da Vinci (Italian painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer, 1452-1519)

From the Gallup News Service:

“Despite highly publicized acts of workplace violence, such as last week’s deadly shootings at two Atlanta brokerage firms and Thursday’s fatal shootings at two Alabama businesses, a new Gallup poll finds most Americans generally feel safe at the office.

“The poll, conducted on August 3 and 4, found that 80 percent of Americans who work outside the home are not worried about a coworker committing an act of violence. Only 7 percent are very worried, and another 13 percent are somewhat worried. However, 18 percent of American workers say they personally know someone capable of committing such an act at their workplace.

“When broken down by regions, Americans living in the West tend to have the highest level of concern about possible violence in their workplace (28 percent), compared to the East and South (20 percent each) and the Midwest (16 percent). In addition, the Gallup survey found workers living in suburban areas are more likely to fear an act of violence (23 percent) than those who live in urban (20 percent) or rural areas (15 percent).

“Although the victims of the Atlanta shootings were primarily white, African-Americans and other minority groups have a higher level of concern regarding workplace violence: 28 percent of non-whites polled were worried about the potential for violence in their workplace, compared to 18 percent of whites. . . .”

Here on the coast of Maine, summer vacations are in full swing. This year, everyone seems happy. And why not? The economy is doing well. Americans aren’t at war. Even dry weather, while bad for farmers, is good for tourists.

That’s all reflected in the “Feel Good Index,” calculated from a 16-item survey conducted by Louis Harris and Associates in mid-May. That index now stands at 74 percent — a full six points ahead of the 1997 number. Some of the items saw even larger jumps. Asked whether “you feel good about” the nation’s economy, for instance, 68 percent said “yes,” up from 40 percent in 1997. Other large leaps include “your children’s future” (60 percent today, versus 48 percent in 1997), “the state of the nation” (63 percent now, 52 percent in 1997), and “the quality of air, water, and environment where you live and work” (69 percent, up from 61 percent). These issues, along with feelings about such things as “your home,” “your health,” and “your standard of living,” are all part of the index.

In general, then, we’re feeling very good. Two questions, however, provide a curious disparity — and a more penetrating insight into the nation’s soul. The first asked whether you feel good about “the morals and values of people in your community.” This year, a comforting 70 percent say “yes” (up from 65 percent in 1997). But when asked whether you feel good about “the morals and values of Americans in general,” only 36 percent say “yes.” It’s the only question in this year’s battery that produces less than a 60 percent agreement. Americans feel very good about everything except the morals and values of their fellow Americans. What does that tell us?

First, it calls into question our ability to assess one another. If more than two-thirds of us feel good about our neighbors’ morals, yet almost two-thirds do not feel good about the morals of “Americans in general,” where do all these immoral “Americans in general” live? Not in my community, obviously. Do these people really exist, or is this response a figment of a media-hyped age, where the world is portrayed as a surly concatenation of cads, knaves, and scoundrels? Maybe this answer simply means we’re not very good at judging one another’s probity; after all, we rank our neighbor’s morality far higher than it would be ranked by most people in the world. Or maybe it means that familiarity breeds respect. When I get to know people as well as I know my neighbors, in other words, I’m more apt to feel good about their morals.

Second, these questions speak reams by reversal. That’s 64 percent of us who don’t feel good about “the values and morals or Americans in general” — a large percentage. “I live in a corrupt and debased world,” we seem to be saying, “but so what? I feel great!” What’s going on here? Are we dismissing as insignificant the role of others’ values and morals in making us happy? Or, knowing its significance, have we inoculated ourselves against a rotten world by finding a community of morally likeminded fellows where, like Voltaire, we can retire to tend our own gardens?

Whatever the explanation, the real issues lie with the consequences. If Americans hold this curious disparity, what will be the upshot? Some possibilities:

1. Ebbing trust. We express trust by believing that others will act according to morals and values not unlike our own. But what if we can’t trust even our own compatriots unless they live in our community? Just when technology is forcing us outward into broader commerce with people we don’t know, our lack of trust may undermine our willingness to participate fully in those markets. Look for increased conflict here, as a global vision slams up against parochial mistrust.

2. Reemphasized community. Where moral standards are widely shared, everyone can embrace the idea of global citizenship. But when two-thirds of the nation doesn’t feel good about others’ standards, the natural response will be to withdraw into the safety of the comfortable. Look for local communities to become more vigorous because more needed. Look for them, however, to become less tolerant of diverse views, shrinking down inside a harder edge of moral protectionism.

3. Yearning for commonality. Yet moral progress usually comes not from protecting, but from expanding our moral boundaries. We most admire those who extend their ethical concern broadly, treating everyone as full moral citizens. Few things are more uncomfortable than longing to expand during a shrinking trend. So look for the rise of a significant countertrend, an almost-intuitive thrust outward to discover the moral common ground that recognizes the similarity of our own and others’ values.

According to this index, Americans do feel good. But do they feel that good? This one sharply negative item on “the morals and values of Americans in general” hides a great deal of complexity. Lest we be surprised by our future, it should weigh more heavily in the overall calculations.

(c)1999 by Rushworth M. Kidder

Should employers shoulder part of the blame when a disgruntled client or employee opens fire at the workplace? Can an employer be held accountable for failing to protect workers under such circumstances?

Increasingly, the answer is yes, and that is our lead story this week in Business Ethics Newsline. But in a related story, we also report some good news: Despite recent headline-grabbing tragedies, workplaces in the United States have actually become safer in recent years.

We follow with four stories about freedom of speech in the workplace and in the communications media: an important case involving an employer’s right and responsibility to curtail racial insults in the workplace; the story of radio-station staff members locked out because they criticized management on-air; a court ruling about the regulation granting the right of reply to some people attacked in broadcast editorials; and a controversial Web site where police are posting pictures of Woodstock rioters and asking the public to help identify them.

Next, two items about discrimination: a Japanese car company’s admission that it has long discriminated against women employees, and a court decision holding that the Boy Scouts of America cannot discriminate against gays.

An extended take this week on legal and court issues: a settlement in the aftermath of a refinery fire, a settlement following an airliner crash, the first criminal verdict in the Olympic scandal, charges of insider trading against a Canadian software firm, and an investment bank’s settlement in a fraud case.

In our “Whatever Happened to…” file, we catch you up on the U.S. Senate’s probe of allegedly misleading sweepstakes offers.

And we wrap up our report with two Trendlines features: a survey about sick days in the British workplace, and a multination study showing high levels of stress among working mothers.

Have a productive, ethical week.

– Carl Hausman

WASHINGTON
Employers increasingly are being held accountable for not doing enough to protect their workers from on-the-job violence, the Associated Press reported last week.

Because of high-profile incidents such as the stock-trader shootings in Atlanta and the shootings of three people last week by a disgruntled employee near Birmingham, Alabama, “companies are really under the gun — literally — to prevent violence and other hostile acts at work from happening,” according to Lynne McClure, an author who writes about workplace-violence issues.

Several recent court rulings have found employers negligent for failing to heed threats made by violent workers, and for not screening employees for histories of violence.

The AP reports that firms are adopting various measures to deal with workplace threats, including providing abused employees with cell phones and quick-access parking places, displaying help numbers in bathrooms where they can be written down in private, and creating threat-assessment teams to help managers cope with violent workers.

WASHINGTON
While spectacular incidents of workplace violence grab headlines, the number of U.S. job-related deaths for all causes quietly fell last year to 6,026, the lowest number since 1992, according to government statistics released last week.

The newly released “Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries” reports that the tally of on-the-job deaths was led by highway crashes and workplace homicides, in that order, in 1998.

Highway-related deaths rose slightly from previous years, accounting for nearly one-quarter of all U.S. job-related deaths, reported the Associated Press.

On-the-job homicide rates dropped to 12 percent, with 709 U.S. workers killed in the workplace, most often by criminals, coworkers, customers, partners, or ex-lovers, according to the AP report.

Labor secretary Alexis Herman last week announced measures to bolster the safety of U.S. farm workers, a disproportionate number of whom are killed each year, and many of whom are under 17 years of age.

SAN FRANCISCO
The California Supreme Court last week set what may be an important precedent when it ruled that an employee can be prohibited from using racial slurs on the job.

The ruling comes in the 1993 case of an Avis Rent-a-Car supervisor banned from using racial slurs against his Hispanic coworkers, who complained that the man’s persistently hostile speech constituted harassment and discrimination.

Lower courts sided with the workers, ruling that they were a “captive audience” and could only have avoided the hostile language by quitting their jobs. The court ordered the speech to stop and required Avis to pay $135,000 for not doing enough to stop the abusive language, the Associated Press reported.

Last week’s controversial ruling, upholding the lower court’s decision, split the California Supreme Court 4-3, with all judges admitting that the ruling ventured into uncharted First Amendment territory.

While the ruling is law only within California, other states may consider such a decision when their courts rule on similar matters. The decision may also be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the limits of national law are tested.

Dissenting justice Janice Rogers Brown wrote that “speech is unpleasant sometimes. It may be disgusting. It may be offensive. But, with few exceptions … [courts may not act] as a surgical instrument to extricate disfavored ideas,” the Reuters news agency reported.

But American Civil Liberties Union executive Michelle Alexander said that the verdict simply groups persistent racist speech with other expressions — terrorist, fraud, and extortion threats — not protected by the First Amendment.

BERKELEY
The staff at Berkeley’s alternative-radio station KPFA last week returned to work, partially ending a bitter dispute over free speech between staffers and KPFA’s owner, the Pacifica Foundation.

Pacifica locked KPFA’s doors last month, putting its entire staff on paid, involuntary leave after staff criticized Pacifica on the air, the San Francisco Examiner reported.

The criticism began after Pacifica refused to renew the contract of a popular station manager, and issued a directive forbidding employees from discussing the decision on-air.

After firing several staff for disobeying the order, Pacifica shut down the community radio station, and hired armed guards to keep staff and protestors away from facilities.

After three weeks of protests, Pacifica reversed policy, saying that it would readmit KPFA’s staff, rescind the gag order, allow the immediate resumption of local broadcasting, and continue mediation talks with KPFA staff, the Examiner reported.

The controversy has prompted California lawmakers to schedule a hearing later this month on whether Pacifica’s shutdown of KPFA violated the company’s public-service charter and tax-exempt status.

WASHINGTON
A federal court last week ordered the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to decide once and for all whether radio and television stations must be required to give political candidates a chance to respond to critical editorials and personal attacks.

Current policy requires stations to allow candidates whose opponents are endorsed by a station, and persons and groups criticized in on-air editorials, to be given equal time to respond. The provision does not cover news reporting.

The court let those rules stand, but demanded that the FCC reexamine the issue so that court challenges can go forward, the Reuters news agency reported.

Broadcasters have challenged the clause in courts, arguing that it deters them from presenting opinions and infringes on free-speech rights.

But supporters claim that the provision serves the public interest by allowing unpopular viewpoints to be heard, according to the Reuters report.

Last week, the court ruled that “without a clear explanation for the rules, the court is not in a position to review whether they continue to serve the public interest” or infringe on First Amendment interests.

ROME, New York
The New York State Police last week refused to remove eight Associated Press photographs from the police Web site, insisting that the images of rioters at the Woodstock ‘99 concert belonged to the public domain.

The police are using the photographs in an effort to track down rioters who destroyed pay phones, looted vendors, and broke into an automatic teller machine at the end of the Woodstock festival last month.

The Associated Press and other press groups complained that the police department used the photographs without permission, violating copyright protections and blurring the line between news reporting and law enforcement.

But the New York police say the images and four others from local photographers, all of which had been previously published, had crossed into the public domain, according to the Associated Press.

“We don’t think that we’re violating the copyright,” said State Police counsel Glenn Valle. “It’s like walking around with the front page of the (New York) Daily News asking, ‘Do you recognize this guy?’”

The police Web site, which hopes to beef up its riot gallery with images submitted by Woodstock fans, has already netted more than 40 calls, according to the AP.

A similar Web-image effort launched in Michigan earlier this year resulted in about 90 arrests following a riot over a Michigan State basketball game, according to a report by APBNews.

HIROSHIMA
Mazda Motor Corp. last week announced that it will raise the pay of nearly 500 of the automaker’s female workers to correct discrimination discovered during an internal audit of its Japanese facilities.

Mazda said that an examination of the performance and skills of 1,000 female employees showed that nearly half deserved higher pay, and that three deserved promotion, the Associated Press reported.

Mazda spokeswoman Nobuko Watanabe said that the adjustments were part of the company’s effort to correct a longstanding cultural bias against women in the workplace.

“There is still a Japanese way of thinking in the company, and women weren’t being utilized fully,” said Watanabe, according to the AP report.

The newly promoted women will be moved to Mazda’s lowest managerial position, joining 2,300 men and only four other women as assistant managers.

Mazda’s move bucks the trend of many Japanese companies, the majority of which said in a recent survey that they resist appointing women as managers because of a presumed “lack of knowledge and judgment.”

TRENTON, New Jersey
The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled unanimously last week that the Boy Scouts of America’s ban on gays is illegal under New Jersey state law.

The justices upheld a lower court’s ruling that the Boy Scouts, which recruits publicly and is sponsored by public groups, functions as a de facto public organization, and therefore must comply with New Jersey’s anti-bias laws.

The Boy Scouts had argued that it is not an open membership organization because the Boy Scout Oath implicitly disqualifies certain groups, such as homosexuals, atheists, and agnostics, from joining, according to a report from the Baltimore Sun.

The lawsuit was launched by James Dale, a decorated Scout removed from his position as assistant scoutmaster after the organization learned that he was gay, the Sun reported. Dale sued seeking reinstatement.

The Boy Scouts have won similar cases in California, Oregon, Kansas, and Connecticut, and say they will appeal last week’s decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

SAN FRANCISCO
California safety regulators last week fined Tosco Refining Co. a record $810,750 for a series of “willful” violations that sparked a February refinery fire, killing four workers and severely injuring another.

Tosco was cited for 33 violations, including 16 “willful” instances of intentionally or knowingly disregarding hazardous conditions, and 13 “serious” instances of ignoring potential dangers.

The fine was the largest ever levied by California’s Department of Industrial Relations’ Division of Occupation Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA).

The charges stem from a refinery fire caused by a pipeline leak last February, the San Francisco Examiner reported.

California investigators and outside consultants faulted both Tosco management and plant workers for compounding the problem by allowing worker-supervisor disputes to create a communications “black hole.”

Tosco spokesman Mike Karlovich said that while his company may consider appealing the fines, his firm admits that it needs to make progress.

“This isn’t the way we want to run our business,” Karlovich told the Examiner. “More importantly, we want to make sure we avoid future accidents.”

Federal and state criminal investigations of February’s accident are currently underway.

PHILADELPHIA
Swissair and Boeing last week agreed to compensate the families of passengers killed when Swissair Flight 111 crashed last September, killing all 229 people aboard.

The companies agreed to settlement talks with plaintiffs’ lawyers in Philadelphia, where pretrial hearings began last week, the Reuters news agency reported. Company lawyers said the proposed settlement “does not constitute an admittance of guilt.”

Plaintiffs’ lawyer Lee Kreindler hailed the decision as “unprecedented,” but reserved full endorsement until settlement talks begin over the $16 billion in charges against Swissair and its codefendants.

The companies’ offer of compensatory damages failed to please some critics, who noted that the offer requested immunity from punitive damages, and the dismissal of U.S. lawsuits brought by foreign plaintiffs.

U.S. district judge James Giles, who has urged the sides to settle, asked both groups to put their positions in writing before the next pretrial meeting, scheduled for mid-September, according to the Reuters report.

Canadian investigators have so far failed to find a cause for the crash of Flight 111, which went down off the coast of Nova Scotia after the pilots reported smoke in the cockpit.

SALT LAKE CITY
A Salt Lake City businessman pleaded guilty last week to falsifying tax returns and company records in order to help the son of an Olympic Committee dignitary become a U.S. permanent resident.

The plea capped the first criminal case stemming from the U.S. government’s seven-month investigation of Salt Lake’s cash-for-votes Olympic scandal.

The case centered on John Kim, a prominent International Olympic Committee member’s son and South Korean national who needed full-time employment in order to remain in the United States.

David Simmons, former chairman of Keystone Communications, said that he hired Kim in 1990 at the request of former Salt Lake Olympic Committee (SLOC) official Tom Welch, the New York Times reported.

Prosecutors charged that Keystone then fabricated a series of bogus contracts to help Kim remain in the United States, paying him a salary that ranged from $50,000 to more than $70,000.

Simmons admitted that Kim’s contracts and service invoices were fraudulent, and that Kim and the SLOC covertly paid the man’s salary in exchange for Keystone’s help.

Welch has insisted that he helped Kim with the full knowledge of the SLOC, but that “nobody was telling somebody to falsify a tax return,” according to Tom Schaffer, Welch’s lawyer, as quoted in the Times.

Simmons faces a maximum penalty of one year in jail and a $10,000 fine.

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

TORONTO
The National Post reported last week that staff of the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) has recommended that the OSC take legal action against Michael Cowpland, the head of one of Canada’s largest software firms, Corel Corporation, for insider trading over shares in Corel.

The decision whether to take regulatory action will be made by the OSC commissioners.

Corel Corporation claimed that it has received no notice that such action is being considered by the Canadian securities watchdog.

The Post reported that the OSC has been investigating for 21 months about the circumstances of the sale by Mr. Cowpland of 2.4 million Corel shares six weeks before the software company posted poor financial results, which caused a major drop in the value of Corel shares.

Under Canadian insider trading regulations, corporate executives can trade in their company’s stock, but not on the basis of information which is not in the public domain and not available to other shareholders.

NEW YORK
Bear Stearns & Cos. last week agreed to pay nearly $40 million to settle charges that the Wall Street firm failed to warn investors of fraudulent transactions made by a Bear Stearns client firm.

Bear Stearns, which processes stock transactions for smaller brokerages, was accused of negligence for failing to notice signs of fraud by New York-based client brokerage A.R. Baron, the Associated Press reported.

Investors say that they lost $75 million when Baron’s fraud was exposed, and claimed that Bear Stearns should have been able to identify Baron’s patterns of fraudulent trading.

Bear Stearns was not required to admit any wrongdoing under terms of the settlement, which includes a $5 million civil penalty and a $30 million payment to compensate defrauded investors, according to the AP report.

LONDON
Working men are less likely than women to call in sick, according to new statistics from the U.K. government.

The Office for National Statistics reports that working men up to the age of 40 take sick leave for two percent of their working lives, while women take four percent, the BBC reported.

Public-sector workers take more time off than their private-sector counterparts, and union members call in sick more often than nonunion workers, according to the BBC report.

NEW YORK
Working mothers with children under the age of 13 face the most stress in their lives, according to a report released last week by Roper Starch Worldwide, a New York-based marketing and public-opinion group.

The survey of 30,000 people in 13 countries found that working women consistently felt more stress in their lives than men by a respective margin of 23 percent to 19 percent, the Reuters news agency reported.

The trend toward high levels of stress among women holds true for both white-collar and blue-collar workers, and spikes for working mothers with young children.