Ethics Newsline®

The duty not to cause harm is a fundamental ethical principle, and the focus of our lead stories this week in Business Ethics Newsline.

At the top of our report is a story about alleged corner cutting and corruption and its resultant harm: the hunt for contractors charged with putting up shoddy, uninspected buildings that became deathtraps when the Turkish earthquake crumbled their foundations.

Next, a story about fines leveled at Ford Motor Co. in the aftermath of a deadly plant explosion.

This week’s news contains an extended series of stories about labor and workplace issues: a strike by Detroit teachers; work-condition conflicts in the United Kingdom; disputes over the use of foreign languages in U.S. workplaces; changes in composition of the U.S. labor market; an honor role of companies that are working-mother friendly; reports of a widening pay gap between management and labor; and a warning that a popular new type of pension plan may violate age-discrimination laws.

From the international desk we have several stories dealing with various aspects of business and governance: a French protest that was targeted at a McDonald’s restaurant, a surprising ruling in Norway holding that sellers of real estate may discriminate based on purchasers’ races, and a report claiming Canada is a prime venue for money laundering.

We conclude our wrap of the news with three stories about ethics in the world of high-tech: Amazon.com’s decision to modify a controversial program that some claimed was an invasion of privacy, a call by major Web retailers for a global code of conduct in ecommerce, and a report that U.S. software piracy is growing.

And we wrap up this issue with a follow-up from our “Whatever Happened to…” file about the Major League umpires who ejected themselves from the game and now want back in.

Have a productive, ethical week.

– Carl Hausman