Today’s employees seem to think that they are owed a job. That, simply by virtue of their existence, others must be compelled to give them money regardless of the value of their labor. Case in point, the 60 year old Ontario barrister who successfully sued an employer for not hiring him. Peter Reiss applied for a legal writer job with a vague resume that attempted to mask his age and the length of time he had been without work. When he didn’t hear back, he wrote an aggressive letter to the company demanding an interview. Needless to say, he did not get the job.
Still, two years later he found himself awarded with a $5000 dollar settlement from the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal for damage done to his “dignity, feelings and self-respect” due to alleged age-discrimination. As if this wasn’t outrageous enough on its own, Reiss then complained that he had expected a larger payout.
It is fashionable to view employers as all-powerful entities capable of doling out good or evil with the wave of a hand. If a company does not give you the job, the pay or the benefits you feel you deserve, it must be purely due to mean-spiritedness or prejudice, never due to thrift or good business sense. The utter absurdity of this attitude is revealed by considering that there is really no difference between an employer and a customer.
When you contract with another person to purchase their labor or their wares, you are employing them. It makes no substantive difference whether this involves buying a product, enlisting a one time service such as a haircut or hiring someone to perform a regular function, such as answering phones or entering data. They all involve voluntary agreements to exchange one thing for another, namely, work for money.
In essence, every time you make a purchase, you are acting as an employer. This notion that employers have some obligation to provide jobs should then be applied to consumers as well. If a manager can be called stingy and cruel for paying low wages, a customer must then also be stingy and cruel for paying low prices or, heaven forbid, for failing to make a purchase at all.
Just as a consumer has no obligation to purchase a product he doesn’t want or need, so do employers have no obligation to supply jobs. If it seems like employers have all the power while workers have none, it is largely due to government interference in the market. Minimum wages and benefit requirements artificially increase the supply of labor, creating unemployment, and poor monetary policy combined with overregulation keeps the economy at a persistently low level of growth. This means that employees can have their pick of workers, and so can afford to be choosy. But this need not be the case. There have been plenty of instances in which workers have possessed a large amount of market power. For example, in the dot com boom of the 1990s, computer programmers were so in demand that they could practically dictate their terms of employment. The American manufacturing sector is currently experiencing a severe shortage of properly skilled laborers and companies will go to great lengths to attract talent.
However, the current laws in place that allow job applicant to sue employers-and win!-over ridiculous claims of hurt feelings only create an atmosphere that is damaging to businesses and employees alike. If companies have to bear the cost of rejected applicants, they will be unable to make optimal hiring decisions and will have less money available for productive enterprise. In the long run, this means a lower level of overall employment, hurting the very workers these laws are designed to protect.
Anti-discrimination laws are not only bad for business, they are unjust. The state has no right telling private citizens whom they can hire and for what reason. To belabor an earlier point, it would make as much sense to legally compel consumers to buy from certain merchants due to their race, ethnicity, gender or age.
That fact that so many people now feel entitled to employment is a very serious cultural and societal problem. If we want the future to be a prosperous one, we need to understand that wealth comes from producing something that others value, and is not merely the birthright of those born in a free society.