The fall of my childhood heroes continues (Hulk Hogan)

[Purple]

The alternative to this, as I've said, is that an employer can end up with employees he does not want but can't get rid of. Since the underlying reason for having laws is fairness, perhaps someone can answer this question: why is that fair?

Fairness in a situation is a measure of how power is balanced between the participants of that situation. By default the employer has a massive advantage in this respect to the employee because as a rule the average employee is perfectly replaceable and the average 1st and 2nd world job market has more people than jobs. So finding a new employee is easy where as finding a new job is hard. And of course as Flagg said loosing an employee, even with those payments is an annoyance where as loosing ones job can be crushing. So the situation is unfair to begin with. To make such a situation fair you have to balance that power out either by giving the employee more bargaining power or by curtailing what the employer can do.

You have to look at the big picture.

[General Zod]

If an employers hands are tied with firing, they're going to spend as much time as they can making sure they got the right person. In which case I hope you have some incredibly desirable skills. Because good luck finding work.

[Purple]

If an employers hands are tied with firing, they're going to spend as much time as they can making sure they got the right person. In which case I hope you have some incredibly desirable skills. Because good luck finding work.

They already do that. Seriously, looking at some of your posts in this thread I have to ask if you and me are living on the same planet.

[General Zod]

If an employers hands are tied with firing, they're going to spend as much time as they can making sure they got the right person. In which case I hope you have some incredibly desirable skills. Because good luck finding work.

They already do that. Seriously, looking at some of your posts in this thread I have to ask if you and me are living on the same planet.

Considering your main complaint seemed to be finding another job was hard, your solution seems bizarre to me since making it more difficult to fire people isn't going to do anything about the amount of jobs available.

[Purple]

Considering your main complaint seemed to be finding another job was hard, your solution seems bizarre to me since making it more difficult to fire people isn't going to do anything about the amount of jobs available.

I don't think you get it. Every argument you have made so far that I have read in this thread boils down to: "If we do that than the market is going to be exactly the way it already is." The reason why it is hard to find a job is that there are more people than jobs and thus employers are free to carefully pick the ones they like. And they already do this.

If the only negative side effect of doing something is a thing that is already happening due to other causes than that's not much of a side effect worth talking about.

[General Zod]

Considering your main complaint seemed to be finding another job was hard, your solution seems bizarre to me since making it more difficult to fire people isn't going to do anything about the amount of jobs available.

I don't think you get it. Every argument you have made so far that I have read in this thread boils down to: "If we do that than the market is going to be exactly the way it already is." The reason why it is hard to find a job is that there are more people than jobs and thus employers are free to carefully pick the ones they like. And they already do this.

If the only negative side effect of doing something is a thing that is already happening due to other causes than that's not much of a side effect worth talking about.

I'm saying it's going to exacerbate the unemployment problem by adding even more to the time it takes to find jobs.

[Purple]

I'm saying it's going to exacerbate the unemployment problem by adding even more to the time it takes to find jobs.

And I am saying you are wrong. Employers already double and triple check workers, do job interviews, check your facebook activity etc.

[Pinjar]

Workers not hired because of worker protection? It’s oft repeated but should we believe it? Mostly we just get propaganda from or supported by people with an interest in there being no protection what-so-ever. Indeed "the empirical literature has found widely varying effects of dismissal costs on employment levels".

You should be able to tell if someone or something is going to work out within the probationary period. This is a time that can range from 3 months to more than a year in some countries, so if Bob, Alice, Jack & Jill etc. don't get on, or your new widget does not sell, you should have enough leeway to find out.

Clearly the definition of fairness is going to be culturally based. I thought that this was something employers got away with rather than anyone thinking it was actually fair. What people think of as fair seems to be largely emotional so really I don't think I will convince anyone to change their opinion. However I would say that its fair because employees are human beings, not interchangeable mechanical parts, and employers benefit disproportionately from an employees work (after all you expect to make more back by employing someone than they cost to employ so an employee never gets the full value of their work, and if it wasn't disproportionate there would hardly be so many millionaires and billionaires). Even then, after the probationary period, if there was no business case for their employment, and nothing else for them to do, no one is suggesting that you have to keep them on out of charity.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I'm all for worker protection, but I'm still waiting for someone to show that worker protection as it stands in the USA is insufficient, and why Hulk Hogan should've been protected.

(It's also worth noting that different jobs require different degrees of worker protection; thus why not all jobs are unionized.)

[Purple]

I explained it as far back as my 1st post here. Basically I think that it is very bad for employers to have the right to fire an employee for things they do outside of the workplace. An employer pays for your time and labor and nothing more. He does not own you.
This case on the other hand proves that the employer is free to encroach on the employee in his private life and control his or her behavior outside of the time that he is paying for. And there is no actual difference from a moral or legislative standpoint between this and someone firing you because you posted something stupid on facebook whilst drunk one night.

[General Zod]

When you're a public representative of a company you have substantially less freedom to behave certain ways off the job. Hogan was essentially THE face of the WWE for a good 25 years. So when you reach that level of fame your private behavior very much affects the company if it gets made public.

[SCRawl]

The alternative to this, as I've said, is that an employer can end up with employees he does not want but can't get rid of. Since the underlying reason for having laws is fairness, perhaps someone can answer this question: why is that fair?

But why should the employer be the only ones allowed to determine whether or not that person is qualified and doing the job asked of them? Yeah, you have the obvious protections for minorities and women, but what if the employee was hired because the owners daughter works there and got him the job and they suddenly break up after a year and the owner doesn't want the guy around anymore despite the fact that he's never been written up, never made a huge mistake, and is overall a good employee? Why is the employee suddenly out on his ass when there was no fraternization policy?

Sure, you fired him without cause so you have to pay for firing the guy, but unemployment and severance only last so long, what if the job market is like 2009? I mean neither party made good decisions, but losing an employee is a pain in the ass, losing a job can change your entire standard of living for the worse: Why is that fair?

It's all about balance. The employer tends to have greater power in these relationships; if you're not a hard-throwing left-handed starter, and your employer is not the New York Yankees, you are probably on the short end of the power stick. To question is "how far do we go to balance out responsibilities in the employer-employee relationship?", and different jurisdictions answer this question differently. As I've mentioned previously, where I live in the right-wing backwater of Canada -- the province of Ontario, specifically, since employment law varies by province -- the employee's position is thus bolstered in the case of termination without cause:
- protection from discrimination for certain groups (by age, gender, disability status, race, etc.)
- requirement of notice of termination, or payment in lieu of notice; no notice is required for employees, though it is preferred
- for employers above a certain size, additional severance pay for termination

Going much further than this pretty much states that an employee has a right to his job, and, well, he doesn't. He has a right to expect fair treatment, and all that's left is haggling over what "fair" means.

Flagg has pointed out that in times of high unemployment termination without cause can prove to be quite a hardship, and this is certainly true, but a single employer is not responsible for an entire region's employment situation. In a sane world, though, everyone would have access to something like a guaranteed minimum income, so the loss of a job wouldn't be a one-way ticket to destitution.

[Pinjar]

A single employer is responsible for an entire regions employment situation through this type of worker protection in the same way that a single driver is responsible for climate change by not keeping their tyres properly inflated. It is one tiny thing, not even the most important thing that they do, that individually makes nearly no difference but collectively has a great effect.

In reality any ability to fire without cause results in worker abuse. Even if not directly then indirectly because of the things they are unwilling to report and the short-cuts they take to avoid rocking the boat. e.g. Labour-Hire workers are reluctant to take time off sick and feel pressure to take short cuts. American's must know about this because there was even a House episode about a cleaner at his hospital that was making people sick because she was afraid to loose her job. The ability to fire without cause and poor worker rights encourages subservience to the employer rather than loyalty to society. A poor state of affairs.

I don't actually understand why going further that you state translates into having a right to a job. It has been explicitly stated that you don't have a right to a job.

However my position is that it isn't that an employee has a right to a job it’s that an employer has no right to employees. An employer benefits greatly by society allowing them freedom to undertake activity on their own recognizance. In exchange they are expected to do things that benefit society. Rather than get into explaining to everyone that we are all in this together society just says "make money" and allows greed to work for it rather than against it, mitigating its effects by imposing regulations and laws and further directing it and forcing people to use money with taxation etc.

In my mind the reason we have companies, corporations, etc. is because it is the best way we have of organizing ourselves and allowing useful slack (e.g. people that are used to working, organizations with ships or supplies that can be re-purposed etc.) that can be taken up in times of crisis or war. The reason we focus on profit is because money is a simple (very imperfect, exploited and perverted) way of representing good done for another person. It’s not explicitly to enrich companies or make individuals rich, the concentration of money in successful enterprizes and people is allowed by society so that those with a proven track record of societal good can undertake new or large projects that might result in additional societal good.

Even if you have a guaranteed continuous minimum wage independent of employment it still doesn't benefit society for a person to be unnecessarily unemployed. Most people want to please other people and so unnecessary unemployment, e.g. when someone has been doing a good job but the boss didn't like the cut of their jib, also has a psychological effect that can ruin people, even if it does not leave them out on the street, and it’s all about the people.

It was mentioned that law was about fairness? I might suggest that the underlying reason for laws is societal good. Its good for society that the powerful are not constantly at war and that abuse of the masses is not so prevalent there are constant revolutions and so fairness does indeed creep in. I just don't feel that fairness has ever been the basis of law.

Of course every society will have a slightly different cultural background that means what is an essential protection or regulation in one society will be completely unnecessary in another e.g. I would not need a regulation in Australia saying that immigrant workers can't be ground up for mince, but I might need a regulation specifing a maximum amount of ground up immigrant worker in mixed meat mince in a republican's ideal USA.

I don't want to bash America, and not everyone that disagrees with the way things are does, I found this in a google search and it looks palatable so I will just post this link to people that want to "preserve the American Dream for current and future generations of hard-working people". Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I explained it as far back as my 1st post here. Basically I think that it is very bad for employers to have the right to fire an employee for things they do outside of the workplace. An employer pays for your time and labor and nothing more. He does not own you.
This case on the other hand proves that the employer is free to encroach on the employee in his private life and control his or her behavior outside of the time that he is paying for. And there is no actual difference from a moral or legislative standpoint between this and someone firing you because you posted something stupid on facebook whilst drunk one night.

So you do not understand the difference between "show" and "tell"? I am well aware of what your opinion on the issue is; you have been unusually repetitive about that fact. I'm asking you to SHOW why your opinion is founded in reality. Which means providing some form of evidence beyond your say so that this is all a bad thing. You can start by responding to the two direct requests to back up your claims (one from me on page 2, one from General Zod on page 3) that you have deliberately ignored thus far.

[Purple]

So you do not understand the difference between "show" and "tell"? I am well aware of what your opinion on the issue is; you have been unusually repetitive about that fact. I'm asking you to SHOW why your opinion is founded in reality. Which means providing some form of evidence beyond your say so that this is all a bad thing. You can start by responding to the two direct requests to back up your claims (one from me on page 2, one from General Zod on page 3) that you have deliberately ignored thus far.

How about the fact that when a persons very private moments were leaked to the public by unscrupulous journalists he got fired for it?

[General Zod]

So you do not understand the difference between "show" and "tell"? I am well aware of what your opinion on the issue is; you have been unusually repetitive about that fact. I'm asking you to SHOW why your opinion is founded in reality. Which means providing some form of evidence beyond your say so that this is all a bad thing. You can start by responding to the two direct requests to back up your claims (one from me on page 2, one from General Zod on page 3) that you have deliberately ignored thus far.

How about the fact that when a persons very private moments were leaked to the public by unscrupulous journalists he got fired for it?

You seem to be ignoring or oblivious to the fact that Hogan is still a well known public representative of the company. So any actions he does in private have a chance of harming the company's image if they get made public. If he was joe blow private q citizen, you might have a point.

[Metahive]

People comment that the WWE has no business to lambaste and fire Hogan for his racist diatribes...well, would it have been better if they kept him so they could be consistently racist?

[SCRawl]

A single employer is responsible for an entire regions employment situation through this type of worker protection in the same way that a single driver is responsible for climate change by not keeping their tyres properly inflated. It is one tiny thing, not even the most important thing that they do, that individually makes nearly no difference but collectively has a great effect.

It's a nice, flowery analogy, but it doesn't hold. If I dismiss an employee without cause, chances are I'm going to replace him with someone else. So the net effect to the unemployment rate is zero.

In reality any ability to fire without cause results in worker abuse. Even if not directly then indirectly because of the things they are unwilling to report and the short-cuts they take to avoid rocking the boat. e.g. Labour-Hire workers are reluctant to take time off sick and feel pressure to take short cuts. American's must know about this because there was even a House episode about a cleaner at his hospital that was making people sick because she was afraid to loose her job. The ability to fire without cause and poor worker rights encourages subservience to the employer rather than loyalty to society. A poor state of affairs.

It *can* result in worker abuse, and probably does in an extreme minority of cases, simply for the reasons I've mentioned: it's expensive to just sack people for no good reason. (And not everyone here is an American, nor does everyone watch "House". Maybe some day I'll catch up and watch the series.)

I don't actually understand why going further that you state translates into having a right to a job. It has been explicitly stated that you don't have a right to a job.

Well, it's like this: if I'm an employer, and I want to dismiss an employee, under your preferred system I don't have the right to do that, which means that the employee's right to his position is greater than my right to dismiss him. Isn't that fairly plain?

However my position is that it isn't that an employee has a right to a job it’s that an employer has no right to employees. An employer benefits greatly by society allowing them freedom to undertake activity on their own recognizance. In exchange they are expected to do things that benefit society. Rather than get into explaining to everyone that we are all in this together society just says "make money" and allows greed to work for it rather than against it, mitigating its effects by imposing regulations and laws and further directing it and forcing people to use money with taxation etc.

Companies must (or at least should) *on balance* do things that benefit society. Not every activity undertaken has to move the needle in a positive direction, but merely needs to do so in aggregate. If my company emits CO2 in the process of normal operations, then (in a sane world) I will be taxed or will otherwise have to offset these emissions. If I lure a customer away from a competitor, I will decrease my competitor's economic activity, which has a negative effect on society, but at the same time I am increasing my own, which approximately restores the balance. If I fire one employee without cause and hire another employee whom I like better, the two actions offset each other. (The dismissed employee might disagree, but we're talking about society as a whole.)

In my mind the reason we have companies, corporations, etc. is because it is the best way we have of organizing ourselves and allowing useful slack (e.g. people that are used to working, organizations with ships or supplies that can be re-purposed etc.) that can be taken up in times of crisis or war. The reason we focus on profit is because money is a simple (very imperfect, exploited and perverted) way of representing good done for another person. It’s not explicitly to enrich companies or make individuals rich, the concentration of money in successful enterprizes and people is allowed by society so that those with a proven track record of societal good can undertake new or large projects that might result in additional societal good.

Even if you have a guaranteed continuous minimum wage independent of employment it still doesn't benefit society for a person to be unnecessarily unemployed. Most people want to please other people and so unnecessary unemployment, e.g. when someone has been doing a good job but the boss didn't like the cut of their jib, also has a psychological effect that can ruin people, even if it does not leave them out on the street, and it’s all about the people.

It was mentioned that law was about fairness? I might suggest that the underlying reason for laws is societal good. Its good for society that the powerful are not constantly at war and that abuse of the masses is not so prevalent there are constant revolutions and so fairness does indeed creep in. I just don't feel that fairness has ever been the basis of law.

Laws exist to provide a framework for society to exist, and one of the crucial underlying premises of this is fairness. If laws are fundamentally unfair, society really can't exist. The fact that some laws have been pretty clearly unfair in the past -- see the pre-civil rights era US for just one set of examples -- and are closer to the ideal of fairness now shows that we're moving in the right direction, moving as we generally do against the objections of entrenched interests. Ultimately there should be equality of opportunity for every person, and of course we're nowhere near that right now.

Of course every society will have a slightly different cultural background that means what is an essential protection or regulation in one society will be completely unnecessary in another e.g. I would not need a regulation in Australia saying that immigrant workers can't be ground up for mince, but I might need a regulation specifing a maximum amount of ground up immigrant worker in mixed meat mince in a republican's ideal USA.

I doubt that even the worst Reagan-worshipping rock-ribbed Republican voter would contemplate exploiting immigrant workers for their intrinsic nutritional value. But it's a nice line

I don't want to bash America, and not everyone that disagrees with the way things are does, I found this in a google search and it looks palatable so I will just post this link to people that want to "preserve the American Dream for current and future generations of hard-working people". Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

It goes too far in the sense that it inserts the government between every employer and dismissed employee. It reminds me of the idea that each pregnant woman must justify her abortion before being allowed to terminate her pregnancy. There must be some constraints -- no 30th week abortions, for example -- but whether or not we agree with their reasons for their decisions, those decisions are not ours to make.

[Block]

People comment that the WWE has no business to lambaste and fire Hogan for his racist diatribes...well, would it have been better if they kept him so they could be consistently racist?

Was there ever an indication in his persona as Hulk Hogan that he (Hogan) was racist? I think what Bollea said was wrong, obviously, but it was also a leak from a stolen sex tape. Hardly public and certainly not meant to be seen as Hulk Hogan the character spouting such nonsense.

[General Zod]

People comment that the WWE has no business to lambaste and fire Hogan for his racist diatribes...well, would it have been better if they kept him so they could be consistently racist?

Was there ever an indication in his persona as Hulk Hogan that he (Hogan) was racist? I think what Bollea said was wrong, obviously, but it was also a leak from a stolen sex tape. Hardly public and certainly not meant to be seen as Hulk Hogan the character spouting such nonsense.

Hogan had a reputation for being a massive asshole behind the scenes, so he might have been treading thin ice with WWE management anyway. There's a lot of stuff in wrestling that just never gets made public until years after the fact, if ever. Considering some of the shenanigans Hogan's been through it's surprising that he didn't get fired a lot sooner.

[Purple]

You seem to be ignoring or oblivious to the fact that Hogan is still a well known public representative of the company. So any actions he does in private have a chance of harming the company's image if they get made public. If he was joe blow private q citizen, you might have a point.

So what? The employer should under no conditions ever have any right to in any way, shape or form infringe on the private life of their employees. If that means the employer has to take a hit to their image so be it.

They do not and should newer be allowed to own the employee. He or she is not a slave. They only own his labor in the time they pay for.

[General Zod]

You seem to be ignoring or oblivious to the fact that Hogan is still a well known public representative of the company. So any actions he does in private have a chance of harming the company's image if they get made public. If he was joe blow private q citizen, you might have a point.

So what? The employer should under no conditions ever have any right to in any way, shape or form infringe on the private life of their employees. If that means the employer has to take a hit to their image so be it.

They do not and should newer be allowed to own the employee. He or she is not a slave. They only own his labor in the time they pay for.

So basically I can safely dismiss your opinion as utter nonsense at this point. According to you it's unreasonable for hospitals to forbid doctors to drink alcohol up to 12 hours before a surgery.

[Purple]

So basically I can safely dismiss your opinion as utter nonsense at this point. According to you it's unreasonable for hospitals to forbid doctors to drink alcohol up to 12 hours before a surgery.

Absolutely unacceptable. However it is acceptable for hospitals to do a blood alcohol test when an employee arrives and punish any who have alcohol in their system. Because one is dictating what the person does outside of work whilst the other is dictating his state when in the office. If the doctor can suddenly magically remove the alcohol from his body the instant he arrives in the hospital than he should be free to drink.

[General Zod]

So basically I can safely dismiss your opinion as utter nonsense at this point. According to you it's unreasonable for hospitals to forbid doctors to drink alcohol up to 12 hours before a surgery.

Absolutely unacceptable. However it is acceptable for hospitals to do a blood alcohol test when an employee arrives and punish any who have alcohol in their system. Because one is dictating what the person does outside of work whilst the other is dictating his state when in the office. If the doctor can suddenly magically remove the alcohol from his body the instant he arrives in the hospital than he should be free to drink.

Right then. You can kindly fuck off at this point, but if you feel like having your brain operated on by a surgeon that has an elevated blood alcohol level that's your prerogative.

[Purple]

So basically I can safely dismiss your opinion as utter nonsense at this point. According to you it's unreasonable for hospitals to forbid doctors to drink alcohol up to 12 hours before a surgery.

Absolutely unacceptable. However it is acceptable for hospitals to do a blood alcohol test when an employee arrives and punish any who have alcohol in their system. Because one is dictating what the person does outside of work whilst the other is dictating his state when in the office. If the doctor can suddenly magically remove the alcohol from his body the instant he arrives in the hospital than he should be free to drink.

Right then. You can kindly fuck off at this point, but if you feel like having your brain operated on by a surgeon that has an elevated blood alcohol level that's your prerogative.

You have a serious problem reading, don't you? I apologize for not accounting for your impairment. But there is only so much I can do beyond actually writing down text. I really can't read it out loud for you as well.