Week 11 Discussion — What Makes a Fair Deal at Work? — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Hook

Every job is a deal between people who need each other: a business that needs work done and a worker who needs to be paid fairly for doing it. This week you learned that federal law sets a floor on pay, that ethics asks what is fair above that floor, that workers may bargain as a group through a union, and that unions and the minimum wage are argued from two sides. None of those ideas makes a real choice for you.

Your discussion question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: The illustrative coffee cart plans to pay its part-time helper 16 dollars an hour for 1,000 hours a year, 16,000 dollars, a cost already inside the 35,000 dollars of operating expenses behind its 12,000-drink break-even. Federal law alone would allow 7.25 dollars an hour, 7,250 dollars for the same hours, so the cart's choice is 8,750 dollars a year above the federal floor, and a state's own minimum could be higher. Should the cart keep the 16-dollar wage or pay closer to the floor? Take a side, separate what the law requires from what you think is fair, name who gains and who gives something up, and state the strongest case for the choice you did not make.

Option B: The housekeeping and kitchen workers at an illustrative hotel are deciding whether to form a union and bargain collectively over schedules and pay. If you were one of those workers, would you vote to form the union? Take a side, use at least one of this week's terms (collective bargaining, grievance, strike, or lockout) correctly, name who gains and who gives something up, and state the strongest case for the choice you did not make.

There is no single right answer. Two people can agree on every fact in the case and still choose differently, because the choice rests on how they weigh the owner, the worker, the customers, and the people a decision leaves out. The cart's figures and the federal floor are facts; whether a business or a worker should act on them is a judgment, and nothing here is legal advice or advice for any real workplace. Pick the option you actually care about, and make your case.

Expectations

Activity format: one initial post followed by two substantive peer replies. Plan on about 45 minutes across the two deadlines; your instructor sets both due dates in Canvas.

Your initial post — by the first due date (early in the module week):

• Say which option you chose.
• For Option A, say whether the cart should keep the 16-dollar wage or pay closer to the 7.25-dollar federal floor, use the case's figures (16,000 dollars a year, 7,250 dollars at the floor, 8,750 dollars above it), separate what the law requires from what you judge to be fair, and name who gains and who gives something up; for Option B, say whether you would vote to form the hotel union, use at least one of collective bargaining, grievance, strike, or lockout correctly, and name who gains and who gives something up.
• Use at least two of this week's terms (minimum wage, ethics and legality, labor union, collective bargaining, grievance) correctly.
• State the strongest case for a view you do not hold, in one or two sentences.
• Length: roughly 150–250 words if written. You may instead record your post as audio or video (about two minutes) and attach a transcript; both forms are scored by the same rubric.

Your replies — by the second due date (the end of the module week):

• Reply substantively to at least two classmates.
• A substantive reply does more than agree: name a person the poster left out, show where a post treats 7.25 dollars as the minimum everywhere or mixes up bargaining with a strike, test whether the poster kept the law apart from what is fair, or make the strongest fair case for the choice the poster rejected. "Good post!" on its own does not count.

What a strong post looks like:

I chose Option A and think the cart should keep the 16-dollar wage. Federal law alone would allow 7.25 dollars an hour, so the cart's choice costs 8,750 dollars a year above that floor, but the 16,000 dollars is already inside the 12,000-drink break-even. The law answers only whether a wage is allowed; whether it is fair is a separate question, and a helper paid well may stay and train the next hire. The helper gains; the owner gives up money a young business could use elsewhere. The strongest case against me is that a new cart with thin margins needs every dollar until it proves itself. That is a judgment about risk, not a disagreement about the figures.

Notice how it uses the case's figures, keeps the legal question apart from the ethical one, names specific people, and states a fair case for the other side without calling it wrong. That is the bar.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The three criteria below look at your initial post and your peer replies.

Post early if you can — the best threads happen when people have time to reply before the second due date.

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