With regard to David LaRo's response to my earlier posting:
 
 When an independent employee who does his job suddenly appears
in the news media as "drug suspect", "pornographer", "pedophile"
or something equally sinister, he may well be innocent.  If not,
the law will no doubt try to deal with him.  I find the idea that
employers might try to screen out potentially embarrassing employees
disturbing.  It is one thing to take a person's arrest record into
account (and a fine thing, in many cases, to rise above the notion
that an arrest record is entirely disqualifying), but there seems
to be very little to distinguish a concern over an employee's
proclivities from a licence to exercise one's prejudice as long as
there is no proof of criminal behavior.
 
So should an employer try to identify those employees who are
committing authentically criminal acts in order to avoid
embarassment?  What, in the absence of a trial, should constitute
sufficient proof of criminality?  Is it OK for private agencies to
intrude upon a person's life in ways that are not permissible for
the police, in order to gather evidence that will never be
subjected to objective scrutiny?  I believe that it is far
better to leave police work to the police, who must at least conduct
themselves and make their case according to established standards.
Theexamples of embarrassing behavior that Mr. LaRo cited provide
one excellent reason to embrace this view:  just what would your
employer need to do in order to be satisfied that you were not
taking drugs, trafficking in pornography, or molesting children?
The extent to which they would have to become involved in your
private life is scarcely imaginable.  And why stop there?  The
possibilities for criminal behavior are truly limitless.
 
In any case, what is this purported right of the employer to avoid
embarrassment?  The very idea strikes me as silly.  No employer
has any need to feel embarrassed because of the private misbehavior
or its employees.  When a bank manager is caught with his hand in
the till, there is some reason for the bank to worry that their
customers may wonder fear that the bank is not exercising sufficient
care:  this is precisely the issue I raised in my earlier posting--
a question of the employee's performance on the job.  But if he
is caught cheating on his own taxes, the bank can, and should,
consider that the reputation of the institution is unaffected.
They may fire him anyway, but it won't be because of embarrassment.
The question of institutional embarrassment, when invoked in this
way, is a red herring.
 
Well, apologies for rambling on at such length.  I would probably
never see this posting if someone else sent it, because I would
have deleted it as soon as I saw how long it was.
 
 
 
Craig Sanders
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