Firing Family Member

As President, not giving jobs to family or friends is a good policy. However, why didn’t the President have the Board or a higher group review/handle all decisions regrading his wife (or even an outside committee appointed by the Governor or Legislature). The President is apparently not well liked.

My wife and I work in different Divisions in the same organization. She has been here 10 years, I have been here 5 years, and we have been married 35 years. If one of us gets promoted into upper management, does the other automatically get fired?

This is not in the interest of the organization, nor in our interests. If promoting one of us would mean automatically firing the other, this could be used as a political weapon. Promote me, fire my wife, then demote/fire me. Does the fired spouse automatically get their job back if their spouse is fired or demoted?

The policy of zero-tollerance is the attempt of narrow thinking people to apply one standard treatment to all situations. The intent is good, but the implementation is frequently wrong. I suppose the fired spouse could file for divorce and then file a suit for wrongful termination. To those implementing this policy I ask, did you ask your legal department? If so, rememeber, “if all you have in your toolbox is a hammer, eventually, everything will look like a nail". Of course your legal deparment/council advised you to litigate, create contention, and trample common sense.

I will finish with one question — On what basis was the contract with the spouse terminated? In short, the answer was that it was because of something done by her husband. While neopotism is against policy, isn’t it illegal to fire someone under contract without due process and cause? Apparently not. I have many names for those that fire someone without due process and without cause when there is clearly a long-term implied contract. Ethical and moral aren’t amoung those names.

The moral and ethical decision might have been to fire the President, but then again, who appointed him in the first place. The Board and search committee created the problem, created the “work for spouse", and are responsibe. They should all resign or be fired. If the policy was implemented after he was hired, the creators of the policy are responsible. They should have provided a review board, or they should resign or be fired. Just because you have the power, doen’t mean you have the right, and the power to force a husband or wife to fire their spouse is coercion at its worst.

Of course, if the President hired her in the first place, none of my objections apply.

Bob Hirsch, Research Specialist at RSCCD, at 1:35 pm EDT on June 13, 2005