The Business Ethics Blog

I wrote recently about why Hydro One was wrong to fire an employee over the crudely sexist way he and his friends treated a female journalist at a soccer game.

Lots of people disagreed with me, apparently sensing a kind of cosmic justice in a man losing his job over acting like a jackass in public. As I indicated in my previous entry on this case, I have no interest in defending this particular guy’s behaviour, which was sexist and boorish. But I’m disturbed by the glee with which so many people celebrated the fact that he lost his job — his source of income, his means of supporting his family — as a result of his drunken bad behaviour.

And while I think this case is unique in many ways, it is similar enough to other kinds of cases involving bad behaviour off-the-job that it warrants further discussion. Just why were so many people so sure that justice was served when Hydro One fired this guy?

We can think about this in terms of both the substance of the outcome, and the process or mechanism by which it came about.

First, let’s talk substance. Consider, if you will: of all the punishments (or more neutrally, all the bad outcomes) that could befall a sexist buffoon, which one do you think is most fitting? Here’s a short illustrative list:

• Public ridicule?
• Forced public apology?
• Loss of employment?
• Sensitivity training?
• Divorce?
• Expulsion from social clubs?
• Banishment (along with his family) from the community?
• Community service (perhaps at a women’s shelter)?
• Incarceration?
• A fine?

Which of these outcomes (or which combination of them) do you think fits the crime, here? And why is it that so many people think that loss of employment is the right answer to this very complex multiple-choice question? Yes, arguments in favour of the appropriateness of firing have been offered (e.g., an employer should worry that a man who is a sexist jerk in public will also be a sexist jerk at work). But I’ve yet to see a really robust version of that argument, let alone an explanation of why firing makes more sense, ethically, that punishment alone is the right one, ethically, than all those other outcomes, or — for those who believe this is true — why he deserves everything on the menu.

(Nerdy footnote: if you want to get technical, which of the various extant theories of punishment are you relying on if you think that firing was the right outcome? Deterrence? If so, what evidence do you have that people like that are deterred by punishments of that kind? Retribution? If so, what makes loss of employing the right way to “get back at” this guy? And so on.)

So was firing him the right result, or just the one that was most readily available?

Next, let’s talk process. Let’s talk about the mechanism by which justice was meted out to the employee in question. And let us assume now, just for the sake of argument, that losing his job does seem like an appropriate and proportionate punishment for acting like a jerk (or, perhaps, for being one). The very substantial question that remains is who has the right to decide to enact that penalty? Who do we think, generally, should have the moral right to carry out such punishments?

Not to be too dramatic, compare this to the death penalty. There are a lot of people who are opposed to the death penalty not because they think no one ever deserves to die for their crimes, but because they think the government shouldn’t have the power to hand out such a punishment, even when that punishment is justified. It is not inconsistent — in fact, it is wholly reasonable — to say that some people (people guilty of multiple child murders for example) absolutely ‘deserve to die,’ but at the same time to say that the state shouldn’t be trusted with the discretion to hand out that sentence.

Now, back to the incident at hand. It is entirely reasonable to believe a) that someone who is a sexist buffoon in public deserves to lose his job, and b) that employers should not be encouraged to take it upon themselves to impose such a penalty in such circumstances. We risk handing to corporations a very potent weapon if we arm them with the moral license to pass judgment on our off-the-job behaviour. And nor is the burden of such a license a burden that corporations should be too eager to bear.

A substantial minority of men are capable of boorish, sexist behaviour in public. A world in which all such men were unemployed would not be a better world.

By now many of you will have seen the video that led Hydro One to fire one of its employees. The government-owned electricity distribution company fired engineer Shawn Simoes after he and friends shouted vulgarities at a female news reporter during a live broadcast at a soccer match in Toronto.

This much is clear: what Simoes did was boorish, and offensive. The reporter who was the target of their abuse should not have to put up with that sort of thing — nor should any other woman. What’s less clear is whether his employer is ethically justified in firing him for it. And as much as I hate to say it, I think the answer is no. I’m not going to defend the man’s actions, which are indefensible. Drunkenness is a factor, but not a defence. But just as there is a difference between what is unethical and what is illegal, there is a difference between what is boorish and offensive and what you should be fired for.

Recall the case of Ray Rice, the NFL player who was caught on video knocking his fiancee unconscious. Nothing about this behaviour implied any lack of ability to do his job, indeed to do it very well. But Rice’s behaviour was good grounds for dismissal because, as a football player, he’s a brand ambassador and is supposed to be able to serve as a hero for kids. And his behaviour made him terrible at both. Or compare the case of Jian Ghomeshi, fired by the Canadian Broadcast Corporation after he was accused, by a number of women, of various forms of abuse and assault. This, too, was good grounds for dismissal. After all, in addition to being a brand ambassador, Ghomeshi needed to be able to work closely with female co-workers, something no one would reasonably trust him to do in the wake of such serious and credible allegations.

Simoes’ case is quite different. He wasn’t wearing a Hydro One t-shirt or anything. (The fact that he was a Hydro One employee apparently took considerable online sleuthing.) And it’s not at all clear that his boorish behaviour implies a threat to his female co-workers. Is there a pattern here? Perhaps his supervisor has insight into that.

Hydro One says Simoes violated the company’s code of conduct. But the relevant section of the company’s Code merely says “We treat employees and persons with whom we do business with dignity and respect. Hydro One does not tolerate harassment or discrimination.” It’s a stretch to think that that applies to all employees, all of the time, including when they’re off the job.

There are two key reasons to worry about the firing. One is that the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. The behaviour was very bad, yes, but not physically dangerous and it doesn’t imply an inability, on Simoes’ part, to do his job. Also, there’s reason to worry about the consequences. We don’t know whether Simoes has dependents, but what if he did? It’s bad enough, as a kid, to have a dad seen behaving like that. It’s even worse when Dad loses his job and can’t afford to support you anymore.

The other reason to worry about the firing is that the move implies that employers own you, and your behaviour, 24 hours a day. It implies that there’s no private sphere. After all, there are all kinds of things that you could do, off the job, that might displease your employer. Should they all be firing offences? What if you were filmed taking part in an illegal environmental protest? What if you were spotted smoking marijuana in the park? That’s illegal in many jurisdictions. What if you were spotted taking part in your local Gay Pride parade? That’s legal in most places, but what if your employer is super conservative? It’s simply not healthy for employers to be allowed to make those kinds of calls about off-the-job behaviour.

So I think Hydro One made the wrong call in firing Simoes. We should not tolerate sexual harassment, in public or at work. But unwillingness to tolerate it means we should be ready and willing to speak up against it, even to do so quite aggressively. It doesn’t mean that our employers should get to hand out punishments for behaviour that happens off the clock.

Statistics Canada has just released this report on The underground economy in Canada, 2012 — essentially an attempt to gauge the extent of “market-based economic activities, whether legal or illegal, that escape measurement because of their hidden, illegal or informal nature”.

The report’s key finding:

In 2012, total underground activity was $42.4 billion in Canada or about 2.3% of gross domestic product.

The residential construction industry is the key culprit, accounting for 28.3% of the total. In other words, lots of people are having home renovations done, paying cash, and the contractors aren’t charging — or forking over to government — the required taxes.

The government’s concern, of course, is not merely with measuring the extent of the underground economy. Market activities that “escape measurement” because of their “hidden, illegal or informal nature” are not just unmeasured, but untaxed. So the missing $42.4 billion means a lot of forgone tax revenue.

Ethically this is not good. Contractors (for example) who don’t charge the required taxes are not competing fairly. And consumers who are complicit in such tax avoidance aren’t paying their fair share of the national tax burden; they are, to use the standard mass transit metaphor, “free riders,” letting the rest of us pay to support the tax-funded services that we all enjoy.

Part of the problem, naturally, is that those who engage in ‘underground’ transactions may tell themselves that it’s a victimless crime. But that’s simply false. If you don’t pay your share, you’re not stealing from the government — you’re stealing from the rest of us.

Naturally, some will blame the tax system. Taxes are too high, they’ll say. Or the tax system is too complicated. Fair enough: if that’s your view, work to change the system. Go vote. Write your MP. I realize none of that is guaranteed to get results. But if you break the law in order to protest it, you should at least do it openly. Anything else requires an awful lot of self-serving rationalization. The fact that you feel like you’re already paying too much doesn’t mean that you actually are.

Of course, we needn’t be entirely sanctimonious about this either. Consumers, for their part, can’t plausibly be expected to enquire, for every cash transaction, whether the business involved is paying its taxes. And there’s room for sympathy — always — for those on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. If you’re living below the poverty line and cutting lawns or babysitting to make ends meet, I have some sympathy for playing fast and loose with the tax rules. But then, that same justification doesn’t apply to the upper-middle-class household paying under the table to have a deck built on the back of their suburban house.

Finally, it’s worth noting the upside, the good news implied by the fact that a bunch of people aren’t actually paying their share. The upside is this: if a bunch of people are getting away with not paying their share, it means we don’t live in an utterly repressive totalitarian state. Consider what it would take to reduce the underground economy to zero: that kind of government intrusion into our lives would be unbearable.

So, the fact that some people get away with it is a good thing. But the impulse to do it — the impulse to avoid paying your share — is not.