The Turnover Rate

One factor that crucially determines the pace of change in the composition of those in the most-senior positions within the labor market is the rate at which opportunities for appointments and promotions to those positions become available. As shorthand, let us refer to this property as the turnover rate.

There is an obvious sense in which turnover rates play a role in determining the composition of the workforce at more senior levels. The pace of change in advancing diversity illustrates the point. Let us imagine a company that has four boardroom seats, all currently occupied by men. They can change demographic representation by creating new opportunities or replacing existing members. If they are slow to take both actions, progress toward more diverse personnel will be sluggish. By contrast, if they increase their turnover rate, thus increasing the availability of opportunities for appointments and promotions to the most-senior positions, they could more speedily change the composition of the relevant positions. In other words, the relative infrequency with which opportunities to secure a station in the most-senior positions become available has a significant explanatory role in which people occupy them over time.

Moreover, this simple story is supported by economic investigation, which confirms that longer tenure for those in the most-senior positions causes younger workers to “experience longer wait times for promotion and slower career progression” (Bianchi and Paradisi Reference Bianchi and Paradisi2024). Indeed, the dominance of older workers in these positions tends to result in younger workers facing increased “difficulties in reaching the top of the wage distribution,” with younger workers both joining the labor market “lower in the wage distribution” and subsequently experiencing “slower growth in the years after entry” (Bianchi and Paradisi Reference Bianchi and Paradisi2024).

In a small range of cases, employers can create additional opportunities for promotion by changing the occupational structure of their organization at little cost (Gomberg Reference Gomberg2007). Doing so could involve increasing the ratio of senior to junior employees or at least improving the wages and salaries of lower-earning workers. A powerful example of this possibility is provided by academia, where some universities have sought to tackle their diversity problem by reducing barriers to promotion, resulting in a larger share of senior staff who are more diverse than used to be the case. However, academia may be relatively special in this regard as there are often serious economic and financial costs associated with altering the occupational structure of an organization. This is because, in many cases, the economic performance of an organization benefits from a particular division of labor between senior and junior employees, including a degree of task-based specialization and a corresponding distribution of workplace authority among workers. Most obviously, there should not be as many chief executive officers (CEOs) as staff members; nor should there be as many heads of division or, indeed, as many line managers. This is not to deny that improvements on this front are sometimes possible, but these opportunities for gain will often be limited.

It thus pays to consider an alternative way in which to increase the turnover rate, one that does not rely on the occupational restructuring of organizations. An example of such an approach is to create additional opportunities for individuals to compete for the most-senior positions by weakening the claims of incumbents to retain those positions; that is, by reducing their job security.

We could achieve this outcome in a variety of ways. Arguably, the most-extreme approach of this kind is to weaken the legal rights of those in the most-senior positions not to be dismissed or, slightly more mildly, not to be replaced by a stronger applicant. These changes would involve a significant departure from the prevailing arrangement in most jurisdictions, where nearly all employees enjoy robust legal rights to retain their existing position; this means that organizations need a just cause to terminate someone’s contract (such as serious misconduct) and, relatedly, that the incumbent need not continually prove that they are the strongest person willing to perform this role. Rather, what we are describing is much closer to the rules that exist in other parts of the world, including some parts of the United States, where at-will employment laws mean that employers can terminate an employee’s contract for any reason that is not illegal (thus ruling out acting on racist prejudice, for example) and sometimes including no reason at all.

However, we must emphasize one major difference between our proposal and at-will employment laws that prevail in some parts of the United States. Whereas these employment laws apply to everyone, including the most disadvantaged and vulnerable workers, we are concerned exclusively with the legal rights of those in the most-senior positions. Accordingly, our arguments make no claims about the protections that should be enjoyed by those in junior and lower-earning positions. We return to this issue in the section “Where to Draw the Line.”

Yet, weakening rights against dismissal is not the only game in town. An alternative is to catalyze the creation of new opportunities to compete for the most-senior positions by weakening the claims of incumbents against being demoted and having their salaries reduced. One possibility is reassigning workers at a certain point in their careers to roles and contracts that reduce their responsibilities and remuneration (Casey Reference Casey2005; Riach Reference Riach2006, 554–56). Another is to make more of the most senior positions follow the leadership tenure arrangements common in some public sector institutions, where certain managerial appointments have a fixed term and are effectively rotated among staff. Even if it is possible for incumbents to apply for renewal, this arrangement enables an increase in turnover rates, so long as the process is competitive. A third possibility is to make all senior roles more open to regular review, with the option of demotion in cases of underperformance or where there is reason to believe there is a better candidate for the position.

What these examples highlight is the fact that, although in most cases, individuals’ careers involve the gradual accumulation of seniority until retirement, this is a contingent feature of the design of labor markets. In an alternative world, these perks could be time-bound at the outset, open to more frequent competition, or subject to more exacting performance review. We could even imagine a scenario in which accumulation of seniority is a possible trajectory only until the midpoint of a career, after which the benefits begin to erode. We could increase turnover rates in any of these ways.

Because our aim is merely to draw attention to the appeal of a family of policies, we do not need to select among these various options. The appropriate choice will likely depend on a large variety of contextual factors, such as a society’s culture, history, wealth, population (including its age), and the other social and economic institutions that are in place, as well as how we resolve a host of further normative disagreements about individuals’ moral and legal rights and the exact demands of distributive justice. We lack space to investigate all these complexities. Instead, what we describe (and, in the next section, endorse) is a broad research and policy agenda—indeed, one that is both theoretically ambitious and politically significant—that involves, in a multitude of ways, weakening the claims of incumbents to retain the most-senior positions. Only once we are equipped with a systematic and rigorous statement of the appeal of such an approach will we be in a position to work through the details of the specific policies that emerge in varying contexts.

Distributive Justice

What, if anything, would make the broad changes we described above attractive? Our answer to this question is to argue that they offer a mechanism for enhancing diversity that radically alters the distribution of burdens that are associated with doing so. In particular, when organizations increase their turnover rates in the ways described, this forces incumbents in the most-senior positions to share fairly in the relevant burdens, rather than have these costs fall nearly exclusively on those in more junior positions who are looking for promotion.

To develop this line of argument, it is useful to begin by reflecting on a stylized case that illustrates how some diversity measures operate:

We emphasize two aspects of this case. The first is the point made in the previous section, relating to the significance of turnover rates in advancing diversity. In a scenario where opportunities arise only as incumbents retire, the wait to achieve diversity in the most-senior positions will likely be a considerable one.

Our second point concerns Jack’s situation. The crucial element here is that Jack is the sole bearer of costs that arise from the hospital’s hiring and promotion process, which effectively reduces his chances of moving into a more senior position. One reason this fact may concern us relates to what we might call Jack’s limited liability. Here, the central idea is that if each of us has a duty to do our bit in tackling the diversity problem, we are liable to bear—meaning that we can have no complaint when made to bear—some costs in the justifiable pursuit of that end. But that does not mean that anything goes, because this liability to bear these costs has moral limits such that Jack would be wronged if they were exceeded.

One way in which to develop this line of reasoning is by maintaining that Jack is a victim of wrongful discrimination. To vindicate such a judgment, proponents of this view might point to the fact that the hospital’s diversity programs are intended to benefit women and to disadvantage men—a result that, at least at first glance, appears incompatible with justifiable opposition to sex-based or gender-based discrimination. But even though this possibility has been the primary focus of existing literature on the subject, scholarly and otherwise, we set it aside partly because we think this literature has shown that such objections are unpersuasive. More specifically, in the present context, it is clear that the hospital may justifiably attempt to diversify its leadership team, such that there is an important sense in which Jack is less suitable for the role because he is a man (for discussion, see Dworkin Reference Dworkin and LaFollette2014). This fact strips Jack of a complaint of wrongful discrimination that might be valid under different circumstances; for example, if the hospital’s diversity programs lacked any sound justification and were instead motivated exclusively by a hatred of men.

An alternative way to formulate a concern with Jack’s circumstances lies in claims about proportionality. This calculation involves a comparison of the burdens that Jack bears with the benefits that the policy offers. We might then think that Jack is treated unjustly if the former greatly exceeds and thus is disproportionate to the latter. It is difficult to know whether this is a plausible objection without further details. For example, much depends on (1) the source of the hospital’s diversity problem, say the extent to which it is the product of a history of wrongful discrimination; (2) the consequences of its diversity problem, say the extent to which this problem leads to worse decision making; and (3) how Jack’s track record, abilities, and potential compare with those of rival applicants. Critics might make a stronger case if the hospital’s diversity problem reflected a history of wrongful discrimination to only a small degree, if the harmful consequences of this problem for decision making were only minor, and if Jack’s track record, abilities, and potential were far superior to those of rival applicants. They may also bolster the case by appealing to the effects of the promotions policy on a wider population. Although a common argument for enhancing diversity is its beneficial effects on decision making, it could be that this reason to value diversity is outweighed if Jack’s track record, abilities, and potential are vastly superior to alternative candidates, such that, all things considered, his appointment is likely to deliver the highest gains in terms of health care services.Footnote ² However, because the prospects of this strategy depend heavily on several contextual factors that we do not have space to explore in suitable detail, we set aside this line of objection that involves claims about the proportionality of the burdens that Jack suffers.

Thus, in what follows, we investigate a distinct complaint that focuses not on Jack’s alleged status as a victim of wrongful discrimination nor on whether the burdens imposed on Jack are disproportionate to the benefits created. Instead, this complaint focuses our attention on whether Jack is forced to bear an unfair share of the burdens relative to those who currently occupy the most-senior positions. This is a complaint of distributive injustice. The point is that Jack bears an unfair share of burdens in comparison with others who could share in those burdens—and not that the burdens are excessive in comparison with the benefits that result, which is a matter of proportionality. To illustrate this point, we can contrast Hospital with the following variation on that case:

In both Hospital and Hospital*, the hospital honors a commitment to diversifying those in the most-senior positions. But there are two notable differences between these cases: the pace of improving female representation is hastened in Hospital* in comparison with Hospital and whereas in Hospital, the recruitment procedures burden Jack, in Hospital*, they burden Charles and Don.

We take it that, at least at the level of intuition, there seems to be some reason relating to distributive justice to prefer the arrangement in Hospital* over that of Hospital. Accordingly, reflecting on this pair of cases enables us to highlight an often-overlooked variable in diversifying the workforce, namely the job security of incumbents in senior positions. It also exposes the fact that this variable can act as a mechanism for securing or violating the demands of distributive justice. Bringing this point to the fore prompts us to consider how we ought to balance the burdens of enhancing diversity.

Three Vectors of Inequality

In this section, we present arguments supporting the conclusion that a concern for distributive justice favors increasing organizations’ turnover rates by weakening the job security of those in the most-senior positions. In each case, this is because doing so shifts the burdens of enhancing diversity onto those currently occupying these positions and away from those in more junior roles. Our analysis in this section takes its lead from a general principle along the following lines:

This principle assumes a luck-sharing approach to matters of social justice, which opposes socioeconomic inequalities that derive from factors beyond the control of those less advantaged, chiefly their relative misfortune in the social lottery that determines family and class background and the natural lottery that determines genetic endowment (for discussion, see Williams Reference Williams, Dryzek, Honig and Phillips2008). Other things equal, this ideal demands that, when we correct an injustice, we apportion social benefits and burdens in ways that proportionately burden those with more than their just share, according to how greatly their share of resources and opportunities exceeds this standard.Footnote ⁴ These commitments lay at the heart of John Rawls’s (Reference Rawls1999, 62–63) justice as fairness concept—and, in particular, his defense of both the principle of fair equality of opportunity and the difference principle. They similarly animate the most prominent rival accounts of liberal egalitarianism; for example, see Dworkin (Reference Dworkin2000). The principle of distributive justice in transition draws strong support from most theories of this broad kind, and its plausibility does not depend on the truth of any particular luck-sharing view.

In the context of measures to enhance diversity, this commitment should train our attention toward those currently in the most-senior positions for at least three reasons, relating to (1) historical injustice, (2) cohort inequality, and (3) diachronic inequality.

Distributive Justice and Historical Injustice

Those in the most-senior positions within organizations tend, on average, to be older than those in more junior positions. Partly because of their older age, these individuals are more likely than their younger counterparts to have benefited from wrongful discrimination in their favor and in ways that explain how they have come to occupy these roles. At least, this is true on the assumption that the incidence and severity of wrongful discrimination have declined over time, as it surely has. This background affects the demands of distributive justice because it casts doubt on the validity and force of these individuals’ claims to retain their positions—those secured at least partly in virtue of unjust practices—which increases their liability to bear various costs associated with overcoming the diversity problem.Footnote ⁵

To illustrate the force of this argument, let us return to Hospital*, in which Jack secures a promotion partly because of Don’s demotion. Furthermore, let us assume that Don is a white man in his mid-fifties and that his career significantly benefited from a host of wrongfully discriminatory practices that are, thankfully, being stamped out. Perhaps Don was encouraged by his teachers and friends to pursue medicine, where doing so would have provoked surprise and concern if he had been a woman. Perhaps he was promoted at a young age because his bosses viewed him as skilfully decisive, although they would have dismissed similar behavior as arrogant, if not for his gender. In each of these ways, the injustices from which Don benefited enabled him to accrue an unfairly large share of resources.

By contrast, let us suppose that Jack is a white man in his mid-twenties, who grew up in a more progressive era in which wrongful discrimination of the kind that benefited Don was not nearly so widespread. This is not to say that Jack did not benefit in any way from wrongful discrimination in his favor, only that the advantages that accrued to him pale in comparison with those that Don enjoyed. This comparative background of historical injustice matters because it indicates that, for reasons embodied in the principle of distributive justice in transition, Don’s liability to bear the burdens associated with diversifying the workforce is higher than Jack’s. Hospital* more aptly tracks this concern than Hospital, with the difference being that, when Don has greater job security, the burdens primarily fall on Jack, and when Don has weaker job security, these burdens shift from Jack to Don.

One way to heighten the force of this argument is to consider a version of Hospital in which Don is the colleague who reliably informs Jack about his slim chances of promotion. We might even suppose that Don attempts to defend this outcome, in something like the following fashion: “As you know, Jack, the hospital has a long history of sexist discrimination against women. In combination with other factors, this gives it ample reason to prioritize applications from women when making decisions about promotion. I’m sure you can understand why this means we do not have space for you on the board.”

Although there is some truth to this reasoning, Jack might insist that it overlooks something of importance, namely the fact that Don demands that Jack bear burdens for the sake of responding to an injustice from which Don benefited. It is this aspect of the outcome that Don’s statement fails to address. Indeed, we might even think that there is something distinctively concerning about Don taking the moral high ground in this discussion, while being unwilling to consider his own liability to bear the associated burdens and instead insisting that Jack should bear them all. Given these features, it is likely that Don’s comments would fail G. A. Cohen’s (Reference Cohen2008, 41–46) interpersonal test, which asks whether the force of any putative justification depends on it being voiced by certain members of a community rather than by others. We submit that, given the historical injustices involved and the lack of space on the board reflecting Don maintaining his seat there, Jack can reasonably doubt the sincerity of Don’s account of how the burdens of transition must fall.

Distributive Justice and Cohort Inequality

Let us now turn to the second argument in favor of increasing turnover rates, which emphasizes the relevance of cohort inequality to the demands of distributive justice. Again, we start with the fact that those in the most-senior positions within organizations tend, on average, to be older than those in more junior positions. In addition to being more likely to have benefited from wrongful discrimination in their favor, these older employees also belong to a comparatively socioeconomically advantaged birth cohort whose members have enjoyed unprecedented opportunities, many of which will be denied to members of subsequent birth cohorts, thus enabling them to accrue unfairly large shares of resources. Across the postindustrialized world, older workers are likely to have benefited from low tuition fees, cheaper house prices, underpriced carbon, generous pension funds, and so on. By contrast, junior employees are more likely to be Millennials, who are widely reported to be among one of the first cohorts to have appreciably worse socioeconomic prospects than their parents (Bidadanure Reference Bidadanure2021; Coyle Reference Coyle2011; Milburn Reference Milburn2019; Mulkeen Reference Mulkeenn.d.).

Nearly all the most compelling and influential theories of distributive justice converge on the conclusion that these inequalities between birth cohorts are morally and politically significant and that this consideration is one to which we should be sensitive when distributing all manner of burdens. Even though concerns about diversity in positions of seniority are a largely separate phenomenon, whose existence is independent of this background socioeconomic inequality between birth cohorts, it remains powerfully intuitive that this background bears on how we ought to distribute the costs of transitioning to a more just world.Footnote ⁶

To illustrate the appeal of the argument from cohort inequality, we can again return to Hospital. However, this time, we can add the further detail that our characters are relatively typical of their respective birth cohorts. What this means is that we can suppose that, whereas Jack has incurred considerable debt from his tuition fees and has little immediate prospect of owning his own home, his most-senior and highest-earning colleagues were free of debt from their mid-twenties and were able to take advantage of very affordable housing. If we bear in mind these specifics of the case, then we will likely have greater sympathy for Jack’s circumstances and, relatedly, for proposals that shift the burdens associated with enhancing diversity onto those such as Don, whose circumstances are notably better.

To put this in other words, measures to diversify the workforce take place in a context where those in the most-senior positions have a greater share of privileges than those who are earlier in their careers. Insofar as we hold that cohort inequalities raise concerns of distributive justice, we are led to the view that the costs of transition to a just world should fall more heavily on those with these extra advantages. When diversity measures do not have this outcome, weakening the job security of incumbents would bring us closer to it.

To be sure, we must be careful to avoid oversimplification when presenting this kind of argument. We acknowledge that, in some countries, highly educated and skilled members of more recent birth cohorts tend to enjoy better financial prospects than their older counterparts, sometimes even when measured in real terms, and thus in ways that take into account changes in the price of housing, for example (for discussion, see Autor Reference Autor2014). The argument derived from cohort inequality may be less forceful in this respect. However, even when this is true, the argument can retain some traction if senior positions are valued for reasons beyond their financial benefits. Returning to Hospital, then, Jack could have a valid complaint against being denied promotion, even if his lifetime earnings match those of each of the directors. This is because Jack may desire the promotion for reasons unrelated to income; for example, the authority and responsibility that it would bring. In other words, because there are dimensions to socioeconomic prospects other than income, cohort inequality remains a realistic possibility here.

Distributive Justice and Diachronic Inequality

Finally, let us consider an argument that concerns the relationship between diachronic inequality and the demands of distributive justice. This argument trades on the fact that those in the most-senior positions within organizations will tend, on average, to be better off than their more junior counterparts if we look diachronically, considering the range of benefits and burdens that exist over the complete course of their lives. We can be confident in this result because we know that those in the most-senior positions are greatly privileged socially and economically by virtue of the positions that they currently occupy. By contrast, we know much less about the lifetime prospects of younger workers, whose future career path is yet to be determined. But still, because of the scarcity of the most-senior positions, it is certain that not all these younger individuals will climb to the top; in fact, only relatively few will do so. These considerations identify another inequality in the distribution of benefits and burdens, which yields a reason to shift the burdens of enhancing diversity onto those in the most-senior positions who have already made it.

To clarify this line of reasoning in support of the argument from diachronic inequality, we can contrast the following pair of cases:

It is plausible that, all else being equal, we have reason to prefer Think Tank* over Think Tank, and the argument from diachronic inequality supports and justifies this verdict. This is because the arrangement in Think Tank generates a significant degree of diachronic inequality, with Lorenzo enjoying significant advantages over Elias when we consider the complete course of their lives. But this is not true of Think Tank*, where Lorenzo’s and Elias’s careers follow a much more similar trajectory. Assuming that a concern for distributive justice supplies, among other things, reasons to reduce diachronic inequalities between individuals (or at least individuals with similar talents and a similar willingness to use them), we have reasons to prefer Think Tank* over Think Tank, which is a conclusion that we can generalize across the labor market. Again, these reasons make a case for arrangements that involve weaker job security for those in the most-senior positions.

In response to this analysis, a critic might ask us to consider a version of Think Tank, in which Elias and Lorenzo were identically placed at the start of their careers, such that their ex ante employment opportunities were equally valuable. Might we be untroubled or at least less troubled by the diachronic inequality that emerges once we emphasize their equal starting point? We think not. This is because, as things in fact play out, their circumstances turn out to be very different: whereas Lorenzo enjoys three decades as a director, Elias does not. To be sure, this analysis is compatible with the idea that equal starting points can sometimes justify diachronic inequalities of the kind on which we focus here. But this is true mainly when individuals enjoy particular types of control over the level and kind of risks that they face, such as when they can insure against risks on fair terms (for example, see Dworkin Reference Dworkin2000)—a condition that is not satisfied in intergenerational contexts in which some individuals’ fates are known and others are unknown.

Where to Draw the Line

Having advanced our main arguments, it is worth turning our attention to a subtlety that concerns their application. To illuminate this issue, let us recall two features of our case: we focused on reducing the job security of those in the most-senior positions and defended this thesis in a series of examples where it would bear on able-bodied, straight, white men with a middle-class background. But there is not an exact symmetry between these two threads. There are individuals in senior positions who do not share these characteristics, and there are individuals with these characteristics who occupy less-senior roles. This may prompt a question as to exactly whose job security we should weaken.

Our view is that the case for weakening job security applies to all and only senior positions. There are two reasons for this. The first is that the argument from diachronic inequality supports this conclusion. All those in more senior roles are, in the relevant sense, advantaged compared to their junior counterparts and, accordingly, hold greater liability to bear costs. Thus, one of the bases of our argument directly supports weakening the job security of senior positions specifically and in general.

The second reason for reaching this conclusion is that a high proportion of those in senior positions have benefited from historical injustice and cohort inequality. Although some in more junior positions may also have done so, this is true to a much lesser extent. This is partly because some individuals in junior roles will be younger and so will have acquired these positions in an era in which discriminatory acts were not as prevalent and when prospects were less promising than in previous generations. And even for older workers, whose circumstances may have benefited from historical injustice and cohort advantages, what they have accrued as a result are lower pay and perks than those in more senior positions. In other words, there remains a sense in which those in the latter roles have benefited to a greater extent and are more liable to bear costs for this reason. Parallel points are not true of individuals who obtained senior positions without the benefits of historical injustice or cohort inequality. In this respect, these bases provide less reason to reduce their job security. However, the number of individuals in this position is sufficiently low—indeed, this is the very premise of efforts to increase diversity—that it will not count very strongly against our broad policy agenda here. Even if we were to accept that there needs to be some accommodation of asymmetry between our arguments and these cases, perhaps we could navigate this complication with suitably designed exemptions. Still, let us not forget what we noted earlier: even in these cases, concerns about diachronic inequality suggest proceeding otherwise.

Partly what these points reflect is that the arguments from historical injustice and cohort inequality each supply more contingent grounds for weakening the job security of those in the most-senior positions. These arguments depend on several contextual factors not only in the contemporaneous cases we have considered in the previous paragraphs but also more broadly. Perhaps this is naïve optimism but, in several decades, or perhaps much longer, it may cease to be the case that those in the most-senior positions will have benefited from wrongful discrimination in their favor to a degree that exceeds what is true of their junior counterparts. Under these alternative circumstances, the argument from historical injustice loses its force. Something similar could hold for the argument from cohort inequality, although that is more difficult to predict because much depends on the level of advantage that future birth cohorts come to enjoy, which in turn depends on unknowns relating to the effects of climate change, the pace of scientific and technological progress, and political responses to the various threats we face.

By contrast, the argument from diachronic inequality seems to be more robust, because it appeals to facts about the structure of labor markets as such. For this reason, there is one sense in which this argument offers the firmest basis on which to defend efforts to increase organizations’ turnover rates and to do so by weakening the job security of all and only individuals in the most-senior positions. Nevertheless, in the current circumstances, where historical injustice and cohort inequality are pressing problems and bear on a considerable proportion of those in these roles, we maintain that they add weight to the case.

Objections

Some critics of our discussion may be disturbed by the contention that we have reasons to weaken the claims of those in the most-senior positions to retain those positions. We can envisage three versions of this objection. The first concerns economic efficiency, maintaining that higher turnover in senior positions will undermine performance. The second holds that weakening rights against dismissal or demotion violates a more basic claim to job security. The third focuses on inequality, raising the thought that we should not sacrifice the rights of those in advantaged positions to improve the prospects of more junior colleagues.

Economic Performance

There are several points a critic might make about the likely economic impact of our proposals.Footnote ⁷ For example, perhaps having a boss in charge for a very long period brings organizational stability and an accumulation of (internal and external) human and cultural capital, from which all staff benefit, including those in more junior and lower-earning positions. Or perhaps the risk of being demoted would make those in the most-senior positions less ruthless in their decision making, with detrimental consequences for economic performance and therefore the wages of all workers. Some meta-analyses of the evidence lend support to these findings, suggesting, for example, that the longevity of CEOs is positively correlated to firms’ financial performance, indicating that tenure plays a statistically significant role here (Cao, Im, and Syed Reference Cao, Im and Syed2021). Critics might seize on this result, arguing that weakening job security for those in senior positions would undermine this relationship and thus generate economic costs for firms, some of which will be passed on to other workers, consumers, and perhaps the public writ large.

In reply to these concerns, it is important to stress that we should be cautious in what we infer from the empirical evidence. One reason for this is that some of the mechanisms through which tenure may relate to performance could be compatible with our proposal. For example, if the accumulated human capital of long-standing employees plays a significant role, as some evidence suggests, we might be able to sustain these benefits by opting for demotions rather than dismissals (Darouichi et al. Reference Darouichi, Kunisch, Menz and Cannella2021). In addition, other empirical factors point in support of our proposals, or at least the evidence against them is far from overwhelming. For example, some findings report a negative relationship between the age of CEOs and firm performance, perhaps because of a more conservative attitude toward risk, and others report a negative relationship between CEO tenure and firm performance arising from a decreasing willingness over time to adapt to new industry paradigms (Hasan and Islam Reference Hasan and Islam2022; Henderson, Miller, and Hambrick Reference Henderson, Miller and Hambrick2006; Luo, Kanuri, and Andrews Reference Luo, Kanuri and Andrews2014; Miller Reference Miller1991). In these respects, the economic consequences of weakening the employment rights of those later in their careers are far from obvious.

In other words, the evidence on economic performance is mixed. This is important when set against the data we presented earlier showing that the burdens of current job security protections fall on those in more junior positions, thus aligning with the normative concerns about distributive injustice that motivated this article. How to trade off such concerns is always a difficult matter, but we think it would be a mistake to oppose our proposal, which has a clear case support it, on the basis that it might have deleterious economic consequences.

The Right to Job Security

We turn now to a second objection, which centers on the contention that, even if weakening rights to some individuals’ job security serves the ends of distributive justice, such treatment violates their moral rights and so is impermissible for this reason.

It pays to distinguish two versions of this concern. The first posits that individuals possess a basic right to retain their job, and it is supported by the variety of important interests that are served by individuals’ rights to their job being securely protected. On this view, policies that threaten job security should be off the table, so to speak, regardless of the other benefits that these measures may offer, because gains measured in terms of distributive justice are, in an important sense, appropriately subordinate to the importance of protecting basic rights. Perhaps provocatively, then, these critics might maintain that, just as workers’ legal rights against harassment ought not depend on their seniority, the same should go for their protections against dismissal.

To assuage these concerns, we recall that there are various ways in which to weaken the claims of those in the most-senior positions, not all of which focus on individuals’ legal rights against dismissal. For example, in the section, “The Turnover Rate,” we drew attention to the possibility of weakening the claims of incumbents against being demoted and having their salaries reduced. For those who affirm individuals’ basic rights to retain their jobs, this milder approach to increasing the turnover rate should be much more palatable, because it does not challenge many of the interests presented in the previous paragraph. After all, demoted staff continue to work for the same firm and so will continue to go to work, contribute productively to the firm’s output, and maintain specific social relationships within the workplace. Accordingly, even on its own terms, the present objection is likely far from decisive against our proposal.

However, more seriously, we are also inclined to insist that the present concerns are insufficiently powerful to defend the level of job security currently held by many of those in senior positions. The case in favor of a basic right to retain one’s job is more intuitively compelling when we reflect on how dismissal affects those with fewer prospects. In these cases, any resulting disruption is likely to be especially impactful in part because it prompts worries about the availability of alternatives and possible dangers that arise in these contexts, such as exploitation. But these worries are less immediate and threatening in the case of those who enjoy a host of other privileges. For example, the job security of elite athletes strikes us as rather less weighty, not least because other benefits of the job, such as the wages, offset their import (Parr Reference Parr2024; Reference Parr2025, 189–92). In this respect, job security is plausibly unlike the absolute protections we afford against harassment.

The second version of this objection appeals to the alleged fact that many senior workers may have so-called legitimate expectations that they will continue in their current positions and that these workers may be wronged when those expectations are frustrated because of the kinds of changes for which we advocate. The case in support of protecting individuals’ legitimate expectations is complex, but the core idea is that such protection ensures a degree of predictability, thus enabling individuals to formulate long-term plans and making it rational for them to act in this way (Brown Reference Brown2011).

For two reasons, this line of attack of unpersuasive. First, even if a concern for legitimate expectations is important, this implies only that we should proceed with our recommendations with ample warning. In other words, even if the importance of protecting legitimate expectations justifies opposition to sudden reforms of the labor market that strip senior workers of several of the rights that they currently possess, it cannot justify opposition to policies that are announced today but that come into effect in a decade’s time. This is because it is reasonable to expect those workers to adjust their expectations during that timeframe and, where appropriate, to make alternative plans in preparation for those changes.

But beyond this, we are generally skeptical of the force of appeals to legitimate expectations. This is because we dispute the idea that incumbents in senior positions have a right against their expectations being frustrated. To this end, it bears noting that those in senior positions could adopt a range of attitudes toward this aspect of their lives: whereas some might inflexibly assume that they will continue in these roles indefinitely, others may create contingency plans in case they are dismissed or demoted. Framed in this way, the frustration experienced by the former when their expectations are not realized looks akin to a kind of expensive taste, such that the loss of welfare that results fails to call for protection or compensation (Dworkin Reference Dworkin2000, 48–59). This is because individuals are responsible for the expectations that they form in this regard and are liable to bear the associated costs, at least within broad limits. From this perspective, the loss of welfare that results from frustrated expectations is akin to the dissatisfaction that globetrotters might experience when the price of flights increases and they can no longer afford to travel as much as they had assumed. At the very least, then, those who wish to resist our arguments on the grounds that it risks frustrating legitimate expectations must supply an account of what is distinctive about these expectations that responds to this problem.

Inequality

Let us consider a third objection, which emphasizes not individuals’ interests in job security per se but a concern with individuals enjoying this benefit to unequal degrees. As we noted earlier, our proposal focuses on weakening the job security of only those in the most-senior positions, not of those in more junior roles. According to the objection of inequality, there is a problem with those in the most-senior positions lacking protections enjoyed by others. Opponents of our view might even contend that the proposed inequality is an affront to individuals’ equal moral status, the defining commitments of a socially egalitarian society, or both.

We doubt the plausibility of this complaint. To see why, let us focus our attention on the following case:

It is powerfully intuitive that the government should favor Response B, even though doing so creates inequality in the distribution of job security. The justification for this result appeals to the familiar idea that job security is an asset, the appropriate distribution of which should be sensitive to the distribution of other assets, including those relating to the value of individuals’ employment opportunities. It is precisely because Response B mitigates background social and economic inequalities that we should favor it.

We hope and suspect that many readers will share our reaction to this case. But for those who do not, we can consider the following variation:

In this version of the case, we assume that it is uncontroversial that the government should favor Response B. Again, this is because wages are an asset, the appropriate distribution of which should be sensitive to the distribution of other assets, including those relating to the value of individuals’ employment opportunities. But if this result is appealing, why contend that the government should act differently in the original case, given that both job security and wages are assets that affect the value of individuals’ employment opportunities? We suggest that there is no compelling answer to this question.

One general lesson from the discussion in this subsection is that, when designing and regulating labor markets, it is sometimes permissible to impose burdens or allow burdens to fall on those who are comparatively advantaged, where we would be required to protect those individuals against such burdens if they were worse off. Progressive commitments and sympathies do not require that governments operate in ways that are insensitive to morally and politically significant differences between its members’ circumstances. This thought is reflected in the principle of distributive justice in transition, and it is the recurring theme in our analysis of the Hospital example. In this case (and its variations), it is plausible that there is value in increasing the prospects of some of those who have been denied promotion opportunities, such as Jill, and that the costs of achieving this should fall more heavily on those, such as Don, who enjoy more than their fair share of benefits than on those, such as Jack, who enjoy a smaller share of resources. In other words, it is appropriate for considerations regarding individuals’ broader circumstances to enter policy makers’ deliberations and ultimately to shape the character of the laws that empower and constrain actors within the labor market, including having unequal job security.