Comment by jib
7 years ago
The police are not primarily there to solve civil disputes and disagreements. There is a pretty wide area where things are not illegal and possible to convict, but you would probably want to do something.
The police’s mindset (at least the ones I’ve interacted with) is one of three things:
1. Deterrance from crimes to be committed (doesn’t apply here)
2. Achieve convictions for crimes (would also not apply in your situation)
3. Deploy force to break up ongoing altercations (also doesn’t apply)
2 is interesting. Talk about a specific alleged crime with a police officer and they will not be discussing whether it was a crime or not much, nor if the person committed it, they will be discussing whether it can be proven in a court of law or not that a criminal act was committed by a specific person, beyond reasonable doubt. It is a purely pragmatic operation of “how can I provide proof that something occurred that is against this list of rules”.
The police are in no way useless, most people just misunderstand what their job is. Their job is not to dispense justice, or make sure you get your revenge.
In your specific situation it sucked, but from a police point of view what would they do? Is there a crime? Maybe. Would they be able to present a chain of evidence proving beyond reasonable doubt that a crime occurred - most assuredly not. Would a conviction, however unlikely, achieve something meaningful? Nope, the guy would get a fine at most, but would still be working with you.
On the other hand, an employer is fully within their right to fire someone for a situation like that. They do not have the same burden of proof, they can refer to previous records of incidents, and the consequences would better match what you’d want (removal of the hostile environment).
>Their job is not to dispense justice, or make sure you get your revenge.
This shouldn't be the job of HR either.
What you describe is what civil courts are for. From societal perspective, it is their exact purpose: to dispense justice and prevent revenge. If they don't work, they need to be made to work, instead of relegating this function to random people with random training and random incentives following random policies that are ultimately designed to safeguard companies, not employees.
Why do you think the alternative is a conjunction of randomness at every level? Why not
* the people are HR
* trained in sexual harassment prevention and response
* following a transparent policy approved by the board and a union vote (or something like it, for instance an employee rep on the board like they are asking for)
Maybe this isn't the best alternative. I'm just saying, it's not like the choice is between (a) the government works it out and (b) everything is random.
There are lots of things that are inappropriate for the work place and yet aren't illegal.
And employer is absolutely responsible for dispering judgement on inappropriate, but legal things that happen while at work.
If I go to a co-worker and start yelling slurs at them, I should expect the be fired, even if my behavior wasn't illegal. The same is true for inappropriate sexual actions.
Going through the civil courts is very time-consuming and expensive for all parties involved.
Focusing specifically on the company's perspective, it's also a terrible option from a risk management perspective. It leaves them exposed to the possibility of a very expensive judgment. (Especially if it's a big well-known company that the courts might want to make an example of.) If they can resolve the dispute internally in a quick and satisfactory manner, then that is very much in the company's interest.
Which is exactly why it typically ends up being HR's job. And why it should officially be someone's job.
Framing it this way, I guess the company's internal culture being less dysfunctional because these sorts of problems are more likely to be addressed instead of being allowed to fester is just a happy side effect, but it bears mentioning, all the same.
I mean, Id argue that is exactly the way the system is designed, and it mostly does the job it is designed to do, not just a side effect.
Defining what makes a non-hostile workplace is hard, enforcing it on individuals is harder, so instead delegate that responsibility to each individual company and take action on the company if it does not do that.
In no way is it a perfect system (cue tons of excessively formalized training etc), but it is the best system I know of.
Allowing companies to remove the external force of "If you do not do this, you may face civil action" breaks the model though, so I completely understand why Googlers would like to remove forced arbitration. The risk of that is a contributing factor towards compliance.
1 reply →
The question the parent comment made was not if the law allows an employer to fire someone for a situation like that, but if we want employers to investigate and prosecute crime when the police drop a case. Is that the role that employers should have in society, yes or no?
> They do not have the same burden of proof
That is a key point. At the same time we want the legal system to have a high burden of proof, but then when someone goes free we want someone else with lower burden of proof to step in and let the hammer fall on the guilty. If we changed the law and gave the police the power to fire someone without having a chain of evidence proving beyond reasonable doubt (this which we are asking the HR departments to do), then I would personally trust the police to do a better job with less bias than a HR department of a large company. It would also create a better political environment where the justice system would be discuses without extrajudicial punishment being used openly as an accepted alternative when we find the legal system lacking.
I would argue that allowing the police to fire individuals from companies would be an egregious violation of human rights on par with disallowing free speech.
Do you think that the average HR department would do a better job at it, and if so why?
What would the optimal system be when we want punishment for crimes when the police drops it because there isn't enough proof.
6 replies →