I read an article this week about a union considering going to court because a city permitted a young man being allowed to volunteer to clear a 300-yard trail in a natural area. Their complaint was that the work should be done by a paid employee. When I was working for a city I was giving a talk on programs we had for volunteers and two men in the back of the room were so hostile that people in the audience were asking them what their problem was. They finally said they were union organizers and without these volunteers, there would be more employees and their union would have more members.

What are your thoughts of the ethical issues of volunteering for government operations?

Well it's almost like a work schedule. A store sets a schedule of work for employees based on the needs of the store. Not because the employee needs those particular hours. The government is not there to pay you. The government is there to run efficiently with our monies. You aren't entitled to it.

patrickt wrote:

.....What are your thoughts of the ethical issues of volunteering for government operations?

I agree with the previous post in that a Government is put in place for the benefit of the society and people it represents. So, if the Government believes there is more benefit from using volunteers, then it is ethical for it to do so. If the Government believes it is more ethical (more right) to increase the number of union employees, then volunteers perhaps should not be used, although there are other and probably better means of achieving this.

Clearly in this instance, the Government and trade union have different concepts of what is best for the society they each represent. however, as employing volunteers to work for the Government is a Government decision, then it can proceed ethically.

If the society it represents disagrees, come election time, we, the people can vote in the Government we deserve! Which we have done, did and do - now that hurts!

And yes, I recognise that there are greater and relative "goodness" that Governments and trade unions also need to take into account, and for the sake of this discussion, I will assume both have done so.

And to switch to real life, I reckon the Government should use volunteers as much as possible, and I also reckon so should trade unions - both organisations do as we all know. There are so many people who wish to contribute to society in their own way, this should be encouraged. I have the greatest respect for volunteers and for those with they challenge of managing them.

Its OK to have volunteers, such as the ones in hospitals giving extra care to patients.
I can understand why employees would feel threatened by volunteers, who have the security of a pension or some other income source coming and doing their job for no pay.
Volunteers should be used as an addition rather than as a replacement.

I can understand why some people could feel threatened by volunteers too, people in a paid position often feel threatened by recession, new replacement technology, the new worker who is in with the boss, outsourcing and maybe volunteers etc. All in all, an employee needs to understand that for better or worse, he or she is employed because they represent the most cost effective means of doing a job to a certain level of quality. If a volunteer can deliver the same quality at a more cost effective means to do a job, then maybe a volunteer is best.

And I might add that volunteers are very costly and difficult to hire, arrange, qualify, manage or retrench! Managers do not like using volunteers for just this reason. Salary cost are low, yes, but ....

In many positions, volunteers cannot replace employees simply because what motivates employees and volunteers are very different. Full time staff are motivated generally by money and working conditions etc. Volunteers volunteer because they believe they are doing good and because of this, they frequently refuse to take on certain tasks and frequent ask if they can do something in alternate ways which they believe is better.

The management cost of volunteers is huge.

I see no ethical distinction between hospital employees and miners, Government office workers etc. All receive wages and volunteers potentially can replace a paid position.

Neither can I see any distinction between employing volunteers today in addition to current staff levels and replacing staff in a years time with volunteers. It could be argued correctly that volunteers employed in addition to current staff levels prevent new staff from being hired. The logical conclusion to that line of reasoning is that we should use no volunteers unless no one will accept the job.

We should generally encourage volunteers as in my book, volunteers are generally people who are acting ethically and altruistically. All good stuff I reckon.

In Australia it is considered to be part of the job of Government to do all in its power to keep the unemployment figures low. Therefore I think that it is unethical for Government to use volunteers to do jobs for which unemployed people could be used.

So are you saying that the government should purposely spend money it doesn't have to? Come to America. See how well that's going for us.

That just sounds like bad business if you ask me.

What I'm saying is that Government shouldn't get out of paying money that it does have (this being Australia) by accepting unpaid volunteers to do jobs which people who need jobs can do. The Government pays out millions of dollars in unemployment relief so it is surely unethical on the part of said Government to then keep recipients unemployed.

In Australia prisoners are not allowed to be used for Public Works because that is considered unfair to people (non-criminals) who need work. Volunteers or prisoners, what is the difference if those who need work are kept unemployed?

I just checked and found that Australia has volunteer firefighters. That's unethical? I was giving a talk on personal security one evening to a group of senior citizens. When it was over we were having coffee and cookies and one old guy said, "I get really tired of young people like you telling me how to be safe. You don't know what it's like when you can't do the things you used to do. You don't know what it's like to be old." I thought about it and decided his comments had some merit. So, I formed the Seniors Against Crime who took classes and gave the talks, with a police officer. Unethical?

I wanted to do a citizen satisfaction survey to find out how citizens viewed the police officers and the department. I couldn't get the funding to hire it done, fortunately, so I contacted our university. They decided it would be a great project for a graduate level class. We ended up with a good study that gave us some surprising, and useful, results.

My son is a volunteer coach for a High School Robotics team. Each team has a number of coaches. My son's specialty is programming but there is also an electrical engineer and a mechanical engineer. There are a few other volunteer coaches. The coaches have expertise and they also hustle robot components from various businesses. Without the volunteers there would be no competitive robotics coach.

In a school in the U.S., three young teachers realized that the students in their school were sorely lacking in English and math skills and started remedial classes for an hour each day after school as volunteers. The students were free to come or not except after the program got rolling the football coach sent all the football players and many parents sent their kids. The teacher's union went to court to get the program stopped. The teachers who volunteered were unethical?

We had a group of ministers in town who volunteered to help the police department on certain occasions. One of their efforts was organizing members of their churches to clean up after a bloody suicide so the family didn't have to come home and clean up the mess. Unethical?

Is it the governments' responsibility to provide the best service for the least cost or is it their responsibility to take tax money, ever more and more tax money, and create jobs? Or, perhaps it is to support unions who will then vote to keep certain politicians in office?

No, what's unethical is spending my hard earned tax dollars flipantly. If I have to cut back on my budget..the government should have to do the same thing. Being a volunteer is made to sound like some criminal activity is going on. That's a sham.

Actually, the government has had to cut back. Much of the state government's revenue is dependent on a strong economy, as is the federal government's. If you want to get angry about government not being affected by economic downturn you should look to councils. Their rates are set every year and completely independent on what is occurring in the economy.

"No, what's unethical is spending my hard earned tax dollars flipantly. If I have . . . ".

What's unethical about saving unemployment relief payments and getting people into jobs?

There is a place for volunteers, I'm a volunteer train driver on a tourist railway as well as a Driving Instructor and Testing Officer and in the past I've been a volunteer seaman on a square rigged ship but in both these cases there is no taking of a paid job from someone who needs the money. If either the railway or the ship ever became a financially viable concern and could afford paid staff then I would cease to be a volunteer worker.

Well, if the government ever becaem a paying concern, that would be a different matter.Jobs, like the original clearing of the trail, are a one-time thing and aren't something that would consitute long-term employmnet. But, take the volunteer firemen? A small community in the country shouldn't have volunteer firemen?

Samuel wrote:

There is a place for volunteers, I'm a volunteer train driver on a tourist railway as well as a Driving Instructor and Testing Officer and in the past I've been a volunteer seaman on a square rigged ship but in both these cases there is no taking of a paid job from someone who needs the money. If either the railway or the ship ever became a financially viable concern and could afford paid staff then I would cease to be a volunteer worker.

Can I please rephrase your quote above to mean, it is alright to use volunteers if an organisation cannot afford paid workers?

And with just a little step, this means, it is OK to use volunteers if an organisation's wages budget has been reached?

And just another small step, this then means, it alright to use volunteers if an organisation decides to allocate its entire wages budget for materials, premises', and marketing and use volunteers instead of paid staff if this makes a company financially viable.

I do not understand the ethical difference between these three examples I have outlined above.

Take 2RPH (Radio for the sight impaired 1224kHz) for example, they use many volunteers and also spend a lot of money on equipment, premises, marketing etc, and a very small amount on perhaps a couple of staff members. Should they spend less on equipment, marketing, advertising and such like and more on paid workers to replace volunteers? They could do so and still remain financially viable.

My view is that the term financially viable means many things to many people and is not a good means of determining if volunteering is ethical or not. We all know businessmen who can make the finances of an organisation look better or worse than it really is.

All you volunteers out there, keep up the good work. And you too Samuel. I commend you for it.

It gets hard to differenciate between when an organization can ethically use volunteers and when it can't; we could go on for ages drawing fine lines.
Governments however are being unethical when their use of volunteers keeps others out of work.
Our entire Defence Force is composed of volunteers, both the Regular forces and the Reserve, but they don't keep anyone out of a job as they are paid for the job that they do, as well as other advantages.

Perhaps one of the most glaring examples of the unethical use of volunteers was during the Sydney Olympics when thousands of jobs were done by unpaid volunteers whilst thousands of people were out of work. Had all the Olympic jobs been paid I doubt that the Games would have been a failure. Had they not been held at all then Sydney would have been better off, but that's another story.

I agree with you that drawing lines is a very difficult task and will never achieve 100% consensus. That is why I do try not draw lines, but believe each individual or organisation must draw its own lines. But I must point out that you have drawn a very big thick fat line, between Government and non-Government organisation for the use of volunteers.

Again, I do not think that such a line is valid for assessing the ethicality of using volunteers.

Hummm, perhaps have I just invented a new word "ethicality"? The answer must be no, because my spell check software accepted this word. Amazing.

Fundamental question:
Should people who need work be paid for jobs that volunteers do?

Distractive question:
Is it ethical of unionists to intimidate volunteers and lobby politicians for their own gain?

Working:
1. Dismiss distractive question; is trivial.
2. Examine mechanism of exchange of production: At a productive level, societies are groups of people that opt to perform specialised tasks in exchange for the fruits of others' efforts. Money is a means of exchange, price determines how important (relative to available volume) the effort is.
3. By above definition of society, work that is performed by volunteers should not be performed by employees, because best value for society is achieved . (Ie the value of the effort is $0 - though has other values not measurable on a monetary scale). Employees should search other methods of productive effort that society will value and volunteers will not perform. Net result = greater utility for society, same utility for employees.

Of course I have drawn a big line; the Government is the only organization that has as its aim full employment and consequently a wider tax base. If it has people to whom it is paying unemployment benefits and if it is actively encouraging them to seek employment and if it tells the Nation that having a job adds to human dignity etc., etc., (all of which the Australian Government does) then to use volunteers and thus deny paid jobs to people is unethical.

Samuel: "...the Government is the only organization that has as its aim full employment and consequently a wider tax base."

Unbelievable. The government, the politicians, have one primary goal and that's to keep themselves employed. If they can take money from people who work and give it to people who will then vote for them, well, what could be better.

I suppose that relying on labor-saving devices is as unethical as allowing people to volunteer. Scrap the backhoes and hire thirty people to dig. Scrap the paint machine that paints the stripes on roads and highways and higher hundreds with brushes to paint the stripes. Need more jobs, use smaller brushes. Once the government does this, how do they make people take these jobs?

Since unions are the only force fighting against volunteers, I don't consider them a distraction.

Partickt what do you have against government? You were a police officer were you not? Employed by the government?

You are fundamentally wrong. Your argument assumes governments have unlimited financial supplies which of course is not the case. They have limited tax revenue (which has been reduced of late due to economic downturn) which they must spend to maximise the delivery of goods and services. I don't know about America, but in Australia the government certainly does this in most cases. In fact, most of the time, it is the government departments that are over- stretched and under- staffed and the private companies that waste money on lavish furniture, hundreds of secretaries etc. Instead of calling out 'poor management' rhetoric why don't you actually go to a government department and see how hard these people work.