Losing Your Job for Sexual Harassment Is Not a Violation of Due Process
rewire.newsI've noticed this argument a few times. It's based on the legal concept of due process. However, when non-lawyers use the term, they do so colloquially, and instead are discussing a much less formal thing. This is generally understood by most people, and it's mainly constitutional law experts who bring up the argument.
Like the trolley problem, outside of a limited group of aficionados, most people don't care about this kind of argument because it's excessively technical and irrelevant to what people care about.
This author misses the distinction between the legal concept of the due process (see: the 5th Amendment) and the moral concept of due process. Violation of due process as a moral issue has nothing to do with whether or not it is the government judging / sanctioning you.
It's similar to the term "free speech". It has a constitutional meaning but people give it a colloquial meaning as well... which adds to confusion when you start talking about legal stuff.
Not only that, but the author also ignores that the outcry is not against ousting confirmed harassers, but the idea that just an allegation of it can be enough to kill your carreer.
>...where anyone accused of sexual harassment can lose their job or place at school...
Well, that's not completely true. If you're a union worker, it can be harder for the school to rid itself of the problem employee. Same for many other members of strong unions.
That said, they have to have some process to ensure that unfounded malicious accusations don't both undermine (oh, I hate this phrase) legitimate problems and get innocent people fired, while also ensuring (sexual conduct) violators get their just desserts.
I once interned at a law firm which represented a public sector union. My takeaway is that unions want to get rid of problem employees as much as the employer.
That can make it awkward for a union representative at a disciplinary hearing who is counseling a troublesome employee. Sometimes the lawyer might tell the employee something like, "I can get you off this time but they're gunning for you, so you're better off resigning and taking severance." Which is true as far as it goes, but the lawyer and the union leader are actually thinking, "this guy is an asshole and we need to get rid of him without looking like we sold him down the river."
Long story short: when the employer and union have a good working relationship, a union has no trouble showing a problematic employee the door.
The real issue that I saw repeatedly is that employers will often try to unfairly fire employees, either to circumvent contract rules or because of incompetent or malicious supervisors. They'll even go so far as to concoct complaints out of thin air. In such a hostile environment, when a legitimately problematic employee is under review the union has to take extra care to ensure the legitimacy of the problem. Furthermore, it's more difficult organizationally (i.e. maintaining the trust of union members) to usher a bad employee out the door when N previous employees were screwed by the employer. (Because the details of misbehavior often need to remain private for legal or practical reasons, it's difficult for both employer and union to be transparent with rank-and-file about why an employee needed to go.)
The moral of the story is to maintain a good working relationship. It's ridiculous that employers can't always do that, but I think it speaks to systematic problems in continuity of leadership of large public and private employers. Every successive leader (CEO, Police Chief, whatever) spends a substantial amount of his time attempting to unwind transactions executed by the previous leader, rather than moving forward. That ultimately leads to inconsistent, unfair, and often egregiously improper management practices.
My ex-mother-in-law faced this exact problem. Really oppressive working conditions in a department of New York State government. When she was falsely brought up on shoddy work quality, which was really her bosses' inadequacies, the union wanted to have nothing to do with her and give her a minimal level of support. Greatly re-enforced the uselessness of unions. But they sure are happy to take employees money on a regular basis.
It's not just that this is illegal and immoral (which is the most important point) it's also that the perpetrator has sacrificed the interests of the corporation to his (or her) own appetites. Not something the law is going to shape itself to tolerate, or ought to.
Any company can fire you without any reason in the US. The laws are not really on the employees side there.
Not all states are employment at-will. Also, even if you fire somebody for "any" reason ,if you don't document the process carefully, you expose yourself to legal action. There are a whole bunch of concerted protected activities that your employer can't fire you for.