The Ethics of Quitting

Here's a hypothetical that has come up a couple of times over the years - and is called to mind by some recent events. Imagine for a moment that you are working for an organization when you become aware that a co-worker is being treated in a way you find inexcusable. To the best of your knowledge, there are no actual laws being broken, so you can't report these shenanigans to the authorities, and you are not the party being wronged, so you can't sue the company, file complaints with the Board of Labor, or take any other civil action - at least, not directly. However, you do not have any high-level standing in the company (you're not an executive, a member of the Board, or a major stockholder) so your ability to influence the people who are responsible for these outrages is effectively nil. What are you going to do about the situation?

First of all, you could attempt to bring the situation to the attention of someone who does have either the power or the influence to do something about it. This could mean going to higher management (assuming that the CEO isn't the one directly responsible for the situation), talking with the organization's ombudsman (if you have one), or bringing union personnel (if either your position or that of the affected individual is represented). Alternately, you could attempt to gain support from a major customer (if your organization is a for-profit company) or a major donor (if it's a non-profit agency); if it's a political organization you might even be able to gain support from leadership in another jurisdiction or drum up grassroots support for your co-worker in your local district. If you work in academia, however, these options may not be viable - particularly if the antagonist in your case has tenure, and especially if you do not...

A second possibility is to attempt to gain support from multiple people at different levels of the organization. At its extreme this means creating a new union, but most of the time one can achieve some results by the use of petitions, letters of support, or various expressions of solidarity. Even the most autocratic leader knows that an organization must have contribution from its members in order to accomplish its purpose; if management could do all of the work by itself it would not need employees in the first place. Bad morale leads to lower performance; therefore bad morale is bad for business, and openly defying the wishes of your employees can easily lead to poor morale. At the very least, disaffected workers are unlikely to contribute their best possible efforts to the company, and most of the time it's not that difficult for other workers to see that poor treatment of one of their colleagues means that they could be poorly treated as well. Still, in a soft economy, this isn't always enough to keep management from acting like short-sighted idiots...

In extreme cases, of course, one can quit the company, citing injustice, loss of respect for management who could act in such a fashion, concern over possibly sharing the fate of the unjustly-treated worker, or other factors in one's resignation. But if you need the job to survive, or if the job market in your area is highly depressed, it may not be advisable for you do do this; if you are dependant on the job for survival you may not be able to advocate, agitate, or lobby against injustice or in favor of your co-worker, either. But if you fail to take action, management, your coworkers (including the one being abused), customers, vendors, and other takeholders may all get the idea that you approve - or at least support - management's abuse of your coworker...

So should you risk your own financial/economic survival and quit? Should you risk termination and a possible blackball by all related industries for organizing a Union or Guild? Should you risk your good name and reputation, not only with your management but with the rank-and-file of your company as a whole, and attept to call in help from higher echelons? Or should you just stay there and take it, even though you know that the way your co-worker is being treated is wrong, and even though it makes you gnash your teeth with rage?

It's worth thinking about...