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The Value of Fairness and the Wrong of Wage Exploitation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2020

Brian Berkey
Brian Berkey*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Abstract

In a recent article in this journal, David Faraci (2019) argues that the value of fairness can plausibly be appealed to in order to vindicate the view that consensual, mutually beneficial employment relationships can be wrongfully exploitative, even if employers have no obligation to hire or otherwise benefit those who are badly off enough to be vulnerable to wage exploitation. In this commentary, I argue that several values provide potentially strong grounds for thinking that it is at least sometimes better, morally speaking, for employers to hire worse-off people at intuitively exploitative wages than to hire better-off people at intuitively fair wages. Rather than suggesting that hiring badly off people at intuitively exploitative wages is permissible, however, I suggest that this gives us reason to think that employers can be obligated to hire worse-off people rather than better-off people and to pay them nonexploitative wages.

Keywords

exploitationfairnessinteraction principlenonworseness claimsweatshops
Type
Commentary
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , July 2020 , pp. 414 - 429
Copyright
© 2020 Business Ethics Quarterly

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References

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