How to reform corporate ethics in American businesses

How to reform corporate ethics in American businesses
Student
Professor
Course title
Date
How to reform corporate ethics in American businesses
This paper provides a memorandum written to a decision maker who could be a member of congress, SEC chairperson, state Governor of even the United States president. In this paper, two policy proposals are suggested that address a public policy concern. The importance of the chosen policy pathway is described comprehensively. The chosen policies are compared and contrasted with those that they replace. The two policies are: (i) zero tolerance to exploitation of immigrant workers policy; and (ii) zero tolerance to gender and racial discrimination, and sexual exploitation policy. Recommendations on how to improve the overall corporate governance is also covered in this paper. The potential challenges to the corporate governance boardroom are forecasted, and the possible ways that the government could intervene to assist to solid corporate governance and the interests of individual shareholders are predicted in this paper.
Ethical misconduct in workplaces is common in today’s corporate America. The issues range from unlawful political contributions to bribes to the abuse of company resources. Studies have revealed that misconduct within the workplace declines whenever the economy is struggling and will rise whenever there is not as much economic pressure (Marquez, 2013).
First policy suggestion: zero tolerance against exploitation of immigrant workers policy
This policy proposal is important since it will help to stop and prevent incidences of abuse and mistreatment of immigrant workers by employers in the United States. Bacon (2014) noted that immigrant employees in the United States are usually dismissed, their pay are stolen, they are often threatened and some suffer sexual abuse since unprincipled, crooked employers know that they can get away with it. In case these mistreated and abused immigrant staff speak up, the threat is that they would be deported back to their countries. In California, routine employer retaliation against immigrant employees has become very widespread (Bacon, 2014). The suggested policy is imperative in regards to addressing this common problem.
It is of note that the exploitation of immigrant human resources in the form of excessive hours without overtime, abuse, as well as low wages is a common practice in today’s corporate America. Even though there is minimum wage in the United States, some companies totally disregard the minimum wage directive and pay immigrant workers less than the minimum wage. Policies on immigration in the United States designed to prevent employers from employing workers who are not documented have instead enabled employers who are unscrupulous to mistreat employees and dodge labor and immigration laws (Marquez, 2013). In retaliating against immigrant employees who try to stand up for their job rights, the employers often call the immigration officers or the police to sweep them away.
Nadler and Stockdale (2012) pointed out that in the United States, 10-12 hour days, 6-7 days per week are the usual hours that garment personnel toil. Most of them are Latina, Asian, plus other immigrant women of color. On piece rates, these immigrant personnel are paid at or lower than the national minimum wage of $7.25 for each hour. These workers often work without overtime pay. Moreover, these workers often work under dangerous conditions including poor ventilation, unsanitary bathrooms, blocked fire exits, and suffer from recurring stress injuries. The suggested policy will remedy this exploitation of immigrant workers and bring it to a stop.
Comparison with an existing policy
The suggested policy is intended to replace POWER Act; it builds on this policy to create a much effective policy. POWER stands for Protect Our Workers from Exploitation and Retaliation. The POWER Act policy, just like the suggested policy, is meant to provide vital labor protections for immigrant employees. It consists of important safeguards against retaliation by employers. Given that POWER Act mandates alters in how the Department of Homeland Security carries out worksite immigration enforcement, and by developing more protections for employees, this policy will help in ensuring that the implementation of the federal immigration law never undermines the basic job-related rights of employees (Ritenhouse, 2013). The POWER policy also makes sure that the condition and wages of American workers are not undermined by employers pitting them against captive workers comprising immigrant employees.
The suggested policy builds on the merits of POWER Act but includes one crucial element left out in the POWER policy thereby making the suggested policy better than POWER Act. Although this POWER policy safeguards against retaliation by the employer, it does not provide safeguards against poor pay and low wages that characterize the jobs done by immigrants (Marquez, 2013). It is important that every worker gets paid what they are worth and underpaying them should not be tolerated. As such, the proposed policy will not only ensure that immigrant workers are protected against retaliation by their employers when they stand up for their rights, but also that their pay is commensurate with the labor they provide to their employer. The suggested policy will mark an essential step forward since it would assist in creating fair and safe workplaces for every worker in the United States.
Second policy suggestion: zero tolerance against racial and gender discrimination, and sexual harassment policy – anti-discrimination and sexual harassment policy
In today’s corporate America, there are considerable disparities in the earnings of men and women for equal work. Women, in essence, are undervalued and get less pay compared to men. Given that a lot of women are more, or equally qualified in relation to their male counterparts, dissimilarities in qualifications does not provide sufficient reason as to why women are earning less relative to men for equivalent work (Nadler & Stockdale, 2012). With significant alters in educational qualifications of women, it is more and more apparent that gender discrimination is an important contributor to the pay gap. Studies have revealed that were it not for discrimination based upon gender, then women would be receiving the same salary as their male counterparts, or even more (Ritenhouse, 2013). The proposed policy seeks to address the issue of pay disparity between men and women doing equal work. What this connotes is that if two people of opposite gender are doing the same type of work, they should be paid the same amount of pay. The female worker should not be paid less than the male worker just because she is a woman.
With the very delicate nature of discrimination basing on race, it is sometimes difficult for the victim to pursue a lawsuit. This is primarily because employers could simply disprove claims of racial discrimination by asserting that the performance of the employee along with his/her lack of experience played a role in differential treatment, and...