Q: To afford to start a new business, I must use low-cost foreign manufacturers, some of whom likely maintain unsafe working conditions. It is difficult to be certain from here. In the relevant country, many workers doing the tasks I’ll require receive low wages and face serious health problems including chronic colds, fever, stomach disorders, chest pains and tuberculosis. Is it wrong to start my business in this way? — Name Withheld, New York
A: While wages and working conditions vary internationally, nobody’s idea of “decent” encompasses “chronic colds, fever, stomach disorders, chest pains and tuberculosis,” even in developing nations, even where people badly need jobs.
Fortunately, you have other options. There are labor organizations, both governmental and private, that address this vexing problem and can assist you in hiring workers who will be treated fairly. Or you might reconsider conducting at least your initial operations domestically. Local governments, trade unions and manufacturers are eager to add industrial jobs.
What you may not do is simply throw up your hands at working conditions overseas.
Update: The entrepreneur hired an outfit in Uttar Pradesh whose labor conditions are unknown to him. If the project advances, he vows to travel to India to inspect the manufacturing facilities.
Q: I am a graduate student and hire undergraduate field assistants for our research on waterfowl. We accept people over 5 foot 5 only, since the work involves walking in waders in deep water. If a person is too short, water can get in over the waders — uncomfortable and dangerous. We could accommodate shorter students by letting them work in wet suits, but it would slow down their data collection. Is height a legitimate job criterion? — D.S., California
A: You’ve hit on the essential point. You may consider an applicant’s height only if it is a necessity of the job.
But before rejecting shorter applicants, reasonable accommodations — ways to arrange the work that would enable them to do the job — must be made for size. Is wader technology so primitive that higher, bib-style, boots won’t do? Is a wet suit really unusable? “Reasonable” is an ambiguous but not a meaningless word. You must make a good-faith effort not to capriciously reject potentially qualified candidates. Ethics demands ingenuity.
Update: D.S. hired someone near the cusp, just over 5 foot 5. She could reach many of the nesting sites, and there was enough work to be done to assign the taller assistants to sites in deeper water.
Randy Cohen: Universal Press Syndicate, 4520 Main St., Kansas City, MO 64111, or ethicist@nytimes.com
