Responding to a classmate 1:
Wells Fargo is one company that has been practicing unethical behavior. According to an article on fortune.com, in 2016 the financial institution underwent a major lawsuit in California, that was initiated by two former employees, who tried to meet sales goals without engaging in unlawful activities. The article states unrealistic quotas had been set for employees by upper management that were quite impossible to achieve “10 accounts per day”, “and they were often required to work off the clock to reach goal”. During this course employees were attempting to master the goal set, however some fell short, and undoubtedly were demoted, and some wrongfully terminated. While others were promoted for their illicit behavior of opening illegal accounts, mastering their quota. There were as many as “two million accounts in customer’s names opened without their authorization” and “as many as 5,300 employees terminated”. Shamefully at the end of the day, the top executives benefited while lower level team members suffered and encountered job losses. In fact, recently mentioned in the headline news, the CEO, “Tim Sloan received a 5% pay raise between 2017 and 2018, totaling an $18.4 million salary”.
Two reasons that deem the practices of the organization are unethical is the company rewarded illegal behaviors represented by employees for opening fraudulent accounts and requiring their employees to work off the clock to meet unattainable quotas. And yet firing employees that were pressing to meet their goals without associating themselves with criminal actions. I believe Wells Fargo failed at best practices for their organization. In my opinion top level officials should have met with department specific managers to set attainable goals for team members that could be achieved without the adoption of unethical behavior. And as a result, this would have help the company’s brand stay respectable, and saved the bank millions on class action lawsuits.
Responding to classmate 2:
I grew up watching wrestling on TV as a kid. Whether you think it’s fake or not is irrelevant because what’s more pressing is piece John Oliver did on his HBO show called This Week Tonight. He talked about was mainly how bad the CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment treated his wrestlers while he racked in the cash. By cash I mean $930.2 million dollars last year alone (Parker, 2019). Highest grossing in the company’s tenure. John Oliver stated the CEO, Vince McMahon, doesn’t provide his wrestlers with health care insurance. Given the job that they do one would think that they would have it by default. However, the wrestlers sign contracts that state that they are independent contractors which nullifies the need to purchase health care insurance for the wrestlers because they are technically not employees.
This can be deemed unethical largely due to the fact that the only reason Vince McMahon can generate the revenue that he can is because of his wrestlers. The least he could do is provide healthcare. However, he uses a loophole that prevents him from having to pay it. Another reason why this is unethical is because based on John Oliver’s report most wrestlers work almost everyday with hardly any breaks while continuing to place these individuals in harm’s way. No I don’t think the company is making the right decision. I can’t help but think at some point all of this will catch up to senior management and hit them in a big way. The fans are quite responsive to wrestlers. Especially with wrestling legends. If they were more vocal about how they were treated the fans could boycott the WWE which would be worst case scenario for the company.