The Ethical And Management Issues - 1593 Words

Introduction In September 2015, the convenience store chain in Australia, 7-Eleven, came into trouble when ABC’s ‘Four Corner’s, a documentary series, revealed that 7-Eleven has been using exploitative and illegal work practices to reduce its labour costs. The documentary, by Adele Ferguson and Klaus Toft, revealed that the majority of employees at 7-Eleven stores were being paid less than half the legal minimum wage. In the past decade there has been a steady rise of ‘non-employees’ (casuals, outworker, contractors, etc.) working for organisations, with an estimated  ¼ of Australian employees considered to be casual workers. In China and India, new and challenging HRM issues are undergoing tremendous changes due to the improvement of†¦show more content†¦In these cases, the ethical issues relate to lying, money cheating, deception, law breaking, exploitation of employees, and profiteering. At 7-Eleven wage fraud and labour exploitation kept costs down and increased profits, benefitting both the franchisees and aren’t company, leading to 7-Eleven twice being names Australia’s ‘Franchisor of the Year’. For 7-Eleven, ethical issues raised include choosing to illegally pay employees half the minimum wage when they double the hours, keeping costs down and profits up, as well as blackmailing many of the employees who were international students whose visas had expired, by forcing them to work more than their legal maximum 20 hours a work without complaining to Fair Work Australia or they would risk being deported. These ethical issues signify why it is not ethical for corporations to utilise systems that cannot create profit when legally abiding by the law. In regards to the issue of whether or not organisations are exploiting ‘non-employees’, ethical issues are raised due to potential for these ‘non-employees’ to find themselves in financially and psychologically uncertain situations. Whilst the use of ‘non-employees’ by organisations continue to rise due to the benefits such as reduced