Abstract
The U.S. doctrine of employment-at-will, modified legislatively for protected groups, is being less harshly applied to managerial personnel. Comparable compensation is not otherwise available in the U.S. to workers displaced by technology. Nine pairs of arguments are presented to show how fundamentally management and labor disagree about a company's responsibility for its former employees. These arguments, born of years of labor-management debate, are kaleidoscopic claims about which side has what power. Ultimately, however, not even both together can solve without creative public intervention the emerging problem of massive technological unemployment — the other side of the corporate dream of profit without payrolls.
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Edmund F. Byrne is Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy, Indiana University, Indianapolis since 1969. From 1966 until 1969 he was Assistant Professor at the Michigan State University, and from 1963 until 1966 he was a Fulbright Scholar in Belgium. Important publications: ‘Microelectronics and Workers' Rights’, in C. Mitcham (ed.), Philosophy and Technology II, D. Reidel, Boston/Dordrecht, 1985; ‘Robots and the Future of Work’, in H. F. Didsbury, Jr. (ed.), The World of Work, World Future Society, Bethesda, MD, 1983; ‘Technology and Human Existence’, Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 10.
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Byrne, E.F. Displaced workers: America's unpaid debt. J Bus Ethics 4, 31–41 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00382671
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00382671