I was recently informed via email that I could be entitled to a share of a settlement from a class-action lawsuit. The company being sued denied wrongdoing but agreed to the settlement to avoid an expensive legal battle. I admire this company and have used its product for years. My suspicion is that the lawyers behind the lawsuit are bounty hunters exploiting a technicality. Should I still file for my share of the settlement? (It would be modest — enough to take my husband out for dinner.) If I don’t take my share, everyone else will just get more. — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist:
I admire your scruples about this relatively small amount of money. From one perspective, the company and the class-action lawyers are both economic actors; the company’s legal team will have made their best assessment of its potential losses, as the opposing lawyers will have made their best assessment of their potential gains, and they will have litigated or negotiated accordingly. Still, if you are right — and you ought to spend a little more time to satisfy yourself that you are — taking your share would mean going along with a scheme that wrongly exploits the class-action system. Your suspected bounty hunters wouldn’t really be contributing to either of the two desirable ends that can recommend such suits: compensating those who have been wronged and discouraging future offenses. Giving up your share wouldn’t change this, of course. But at least the affair wouldn’t be something you took part in or benefited from. Why not let your husband take you out to dinner and celebrate that?
Readers Respond
The previous question was from a reader who was trying to make a big decision. He wrote: “I manage the summer-intern program for my team at a major global financial institution. Together with two other colleagues, I decide to whom we wish to offer full-time positions at the end of the term. Our interns come from an array of socioeconomic and academic backgrounds and perform their duties with varying degrees of skill. Those coming from more well-to-do backgrounds appear to be performing better than those who come from less privileged backgrounds. When providing our final evaluations and ranking these interns, should we take their personal life circumstances into consideration? Or must we evaluate interns solely on job performance? We have been given no guidance on this from our program management.”
In his response, the Ethicist noted: “We live in a class society. People who are rich in financial terms tend to be rich in cultural and social capital too: They have social assets, resources and connections. All these forms of advantage can contribute to an employee’s actual performance. But they can also contribute to the employee’s perceived performance. … So you can ask yourself whether your judgment about which of these interns is doing best has been shaped by features that don’t reflect the contribution they’re likely to make. You’re obviously alert to this possibility, because you write that the more privileged interns ‘appear’ to be performing better; it’s worth thinking about whether you can identify evaluative measures that are less subject to this kind of bias. … Firms like yours compete fiercely to get their top candidates, which is one reason salaries in finance can be so high. But — if you’ll permit the provocation — I wonder how much difference it would make to your profits if you made a habit of picking the person that you had ranked third or fifth.” (Reread the full question and answer here.)
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The letter writer might consider what metrics are most predictive of an intern, if hired, becoming a net-positive contributor to the firm’s success. For example, problem-solving skills are crucial, and may be honed in myriad ways and in any socioeconomic environment. On the other hand, an intern with the ability to schmooze may have been received well because he or she was easy to get along with, but that’s where parental connections and schooling opportunities would have come into play. At the intern level, it’s not actually a hiring qualification but rather a set of skills that can be learned. An anecdote about not judging a book by its cover: Faced with two quite different finalists, both male, my boss was unable to make a decision. Then we thought, What if the one who had arrived looking like a stereotypical academic had been wearing the same three-piece suit as the former banker? That made the decision. The “academic,” who quickly adjusted to new sartorial expectations, proved to be an outstanding hire. He rose quickly in the profession, ultimately becoming one of the most respected people in his field. — Sally
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I don’t see the Ethicist’s proposal (“I wonder how much difference it would make to your profits if you made a habit of picking the person that you had ranked third or fifth”) being fair to the intern or good for the company. High-achieving interns tend to choose their placement with the expectation that if they do very well, they will be hired into the company. So the plan never to hire a “privileged” candidate if there is someone a few steps down the line who is “not privileged” ought to be explained to everyone at the start, so that the “privileged” candidate can intern somewhere they might actually be offered a job. It’s also not fair to the company to use this sort of selection process without their buy-in. — David
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I’ve been in a similar situation to the letter writer here, and to me the ethical consideration was a simple cost-benefit analysis: What could this job offer do for the person it was offered to, and what would it “cost” me or the firm to hire one over the other? A job offer at a prestigious, well-remunerative job could mean an enormous amount to somebody without the familial connections to find another (not to mention to the people in their life they may be supporting), and very little to someone who had those advantages and could fairly easily secure another. On the other hand, as the Ethicist noted, it costs very little to have a marginally more- or less-skilled entry-level worker. The fact of the matter is that hiring like this is a total crapshoot, and that an entry-level employee is often negative-sum for a year, maybe two, as they’re trained up. Whether someone will eventually be valuable is hard to judge. In my estimation the question of an employee’s potential is less dependent on the skill displayed in an internship and more so on the grit and hard work that is more often found in people who have found success despite their disadvantages, not because of their privileges. My advice is to hire the less-advantaged people, and I wouldn’t (and didn’t) lose any sleep over it. — Nick
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An important point missing from the Ethicist’s response is the firm’s responsibility to provide clear feedback to interns. Does the workplace have understandable guidelines on expectations, and do mentors follow through with feedback for improvement? For people from disadvantaged groups, not providing explicit criteria and evaluation is a form of covert discrimination — patting someone on the back and then telling others that the person is just not up to the task. Creating an environment with clear objectives, guidelines and assessment is hard work. Can the organization define what they expect with transparency, or do they just perpetuate class-based, tacit knowledge with prejudice and dismissal? — Pamela
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Where do the folks in the middle fit in? The kid who has loan debt but was raised in a suburb? Those people always seem to be left out of this discussion. — Chris
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