[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by MrsJoseph

I am of the belief that contracts are meant to be negotiated. You are not required to sign any contract "as is." You have to state what terms are acceptable to YOU. Moral clause requiring BS that you don't feel is legal? Draw a line through it, refuse that portion of the contract, don't sign it. Moral clause obscure? Require them to be specific IN WRITING.

So: Don't take a job where the employer won't spell out exactly what they mean by "moral." Easy to say when one has a security net; harder when a person's been living off credit cards for two years and is about to be evicted because they've maxed out the ability to pay one card with another.

Most place with morals clauses refuse to describe them in detail. The claim is "moral people know what moral behavior is; if you don't, we don't want you working here."

So yes, it's hard as hell to make those types of decisions. This is not any type of high horse or feeling that someone needs to do as I do. This is what I was taught from a child. Never sign anything without reading it first and never sign anything that you do not plan on following through. I still do it today - and it annoys the hell out of people.

In a lot of morals-clause firings, the employee *believed* they understood what moral behavior was, and were caught off-guard by the employers' expectations. And a lot of them have different standards for men and women, which employees, especially the women, aren't informed about beforehand.

I don't consider it unethical to sign a legally-unenforceable contract. If the person presenting the contract couldn't be bothered to keep it within the bounds of the law, I'm not obligated to inform them of their lack, nor to follow something that restricts behavior more than I'm legally required to do.

If the contract says, "female employees are required to wear sexy underwear on Fridays," I won't feel a whit of guilt by signing it and breaking it. I'm not morally obligated to hand over a job to someone who is either uneducated enough to think that it's legal for an employer to require sexy underwear (for an office job; I'm assuming this isn't a strip club performer), or someone who's willing to comply with it even though it's not legal.

Demanding equitable working conditions doesn't mean "put up with illegal demands until employers run out of people who'll comply with them." It sometimes involves saying, "yes, I see that you're demanding that... and I'm not going to give it to you, and you have to do business with me anyway."

The whole point of civil rights activism is that some rights are not allowed to be subject to market demands or business-owner biases. Whether some kinds of "immoral behavior" are in that category is a different issue from whether a person should comply with a contract that makes demands not allowed by law.

And don't forget. McDonald's is almost always hiring.

They're not hiring 40-year-old people with degrees in sociology and education. They don't like "over-qualified" employees--because those leave as soon as they find something better.