In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:
I make less now than when I started my tenure track job, controlling for inflation. I think it's my right to give less effort on this basis. For example, if my employer is only paying me 90% of what it used to, for the same work, then I can give 90% of the effort I used to (the 90% is more than sufficient to cover the job requirements).
Some of you might disagree, but that's not my question. My question is instead: is it ok, morally, for me to lower my teaching effort? On the one hand, I care about teaching and the students did nothing wrong in this case. On the other hand, I don't want to let my employer leverage my conscience to get me to work uncompensated (giving the same effort for less pay).
I lean towards its being OK. After all, you get what you pay for, and the students are paying for an education from an institution that underpays its faculty. And my 90% is still better than whatever effort the dead wood at the institution is giving.
This is an interesting question, and I'm curious what readers think. One reader submitted the following response:
Your contractual obligations do not change. Depending where you work, you might find if you scale back you are in violation of your contract. You can be fired. Of course your pay should not shrink! I am not crazy. But, know the law. For example, public employees cannot strike in New York. And to act as you suggest you are going to act may in fact constitute a breach of contract.
This doesn't seem to me to be quite right, at least not given what the OP is describing. Professors are only contractually obligated to fulfill their assigned duties, which in this case is simply teach their classes (and do so competently). Contracts don't state that a person must 'give 100% effort' (or whatever). Rather, university handbooks standardly contain provisions for what comprises merit in teaching, which are normally used for tenure and promotion purposes–which is a different issue. So let's return to the OP's main question, which is whether it is moral for them to give less effort in response to receiving less pay.
My own position on this, to be frank, is that it's probably something like morally indeterminate. On the one hand, it seems (morally) good to give your students your best. On the other, as the OP notes, you're an employee–and if your employer is paying you less money over time, they are conveying to you that they don't value your work as much as they previously did, and less than you feel reasonably entitled to (since you might think that you are reasonably entitled to your pay matching inflation). So, while it's good to do best by your students, there's also a fairness issue here: the OP's university is paying them less than is fair (given reasonable expectations) for the same work as before. What follows? Well, following my own account of what morality requires, I don't think there's an unique resolution to this conflict. Rather, we have multiple moral considerations pulling in different directions, and no uniquely rational 'tie-breaker' for setting it. Well, maybe. We can of course continue the discussion to see if there is. But I'm not sure that I see one. So, personally, I always try to give my best. But, on the other hand, I understand why someone like the OP might not. This seems to me the kind of result that a good moral theory should have. Not all moral problems have an unique resolution, and a good theory should lead us to recognize and respect a fair amount of moral indeterminacy.
One final point: my spouse, who has a PhD in Industrial-Organizational Psychology, works on this stuff empirically. Interestingly, the science finds that people in workplaces tend to behave how the OP is describing. When employees perceive what they take to be a justice/fairness violation by their employer, they tend to engage in what are known as counterproductive work behaviors (or CWBs). Employees, in other words, are very sensitive to whether they think their employer is treating them fairly, and have a real tendency to retaliate (e.g. by giving significantly less effort) when they think they are not. So, perhaps the real lesson here is that we shouldn't be focusing so much on the employee, but rather on the employer. Employers should treat their employees fairly, and if they don't, well–regardless of what we might think the employee's duties–the employer can in general expect their employees to perform worse on the job. Since that's not in the employer or employee's interests–since poor work affects the organization–the real lesson may be: pay your employees well and treat them well. It'll be better for your university, and better for everyone, including your students.
But these are merely some off the cuff thoughts I had. What do you all think?
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