Example: biology

The employment-at-will doctrine: three major exceptions

Monthly Labor ReviewJanuary 20013 employment at WillThe employment -at- will doctrine: three major exceptionsIn the United States, employees without a writtenemployment contract generally can be firedfor good cause, bad cause, or no cause at all;judicial exceptions to the rule seekto prevent wrongful terminationsCharles J. MuhlCharles J. Muhl,formerly an economistwith the Bureau ofLabor Statistics,Washington, DC, is anattorney in Chicago, joyfully and peacefully, knowing thatright thoughts and right efforts willinevitably bring about right results James AllenSee only that thou work and thou canstnot escape the reward Ralph Waldo EmersonLike Allen and Emerson, many workers inthe United States believe that satisfactoryjob performance should be rewarded with,among other benefits, job security. However, thisexpectation that employees will not be fired ifthey perform their jobs well has eroded in recentdecades in the face of an increased incidenceof mass layoffs, reductions in companies workforces, and job turnover.

The em-ployment-at-will doctrine avows that, when an employee does not have a written employment contract and the term of employment is of indefi-nite duration, the employer can terminate the employee for good cause, bad cause, or no cause at all.1 Traditionally and as recently as the early

Tags:

  Employment, Will, Employment at will, Ployment, Em ployment at will

Information

Domain:

Source:

Link to this page:

Please notify us if you found a problem with this document:

Other abuse

Transcription of The employment-at-will doctrine: three major exceptions

1 Monthly Labor ReviewJanuary 20013 employment at WillThe employment -at- will doctrine: three major exceptionsIn the United States, employees without a writtenemployment contract generally can be firedfor good cause, bad cause, or no cause at all;judicial exceptions to the rule seekto prevent wrongful terminationsCharles J. MuhlCharles J. Muhl,formerly an economistwith the Bureau ofLabor Statistics,Washington, DC, is anattorney in Chicago, joyfully and peacefully, knowing thatright thoughts and right efforts willinevitably bring about right results James AllenSee only that thou work and thou canstnot escape the reward Ralph Waldo EmersonLike Allen and Emerson, many workers inthe United States believe that satisfactoryjob performance should be rewarded with,among other benefits, job security. However, thisexpectation that employees will not be fired ifthey perform their jobs well has eroded in recentdecades in the face of an increased incidenceof mass layoffs, reductions in companies workforces, and job turnover.

2 In legal terms,though, since the last half of the 19th century, employment in each of the United States has been at will , or terminable by either the employer oremployee for any reason whatsoever. The em- ployment -at- will doctrine avows that, when anemployee does not have a written employmentcontract and the term of employment is of indefi-nite duration, the employer can terminate theemployee for good cause, bad cause, or no causeat and as recently as the early1900s, courts viewed the relationship betweenemployer and employee as being on equal foot-ing in terms of bargaining power. Thus, the em- ployment -at- will doctrine reflected the belief thatpeople should be free to enter into employmentcontracts of a specified duration, but that no ob-ligations attached to either employer or employeeif a person was hired without such a employees were able to resign from po-sitions they no longer cared to occupy, employ-ers also were permitted to discharge employeesat their Industrial Revolution planted the seedsfor the erosion of the employment -at- will employees began forming unions, the col-lective bargaining agreements they subsequentlynegotiated with employers frequently had provi-sions in them that required just cause for adverseemployment actions, as well as procedures forarbitrating employee The 1960smarked the beginning of Federal legislative pro-tections (including Title VII of the 1964 CivilRights Act)

3 From wrongful discharge based onrace, religion, sex, age, and national protections reflected the changing view ofthe relationship between employer and than seeing the relationship as being onequal footing, courts and legislatures slowly be-gan to recognize that employers frequently havestructural and economic advantages when nego-tiating with potential or current employees. Therecognition of employment as being central to aperson s livelihood and well-being, coupled with4 Monthly Labor ReviewJanuary 2001 employment at Willthe fear of being unable to protect a person s livelihood fromunjust termination, led to the development of common-law, orjudicial, exceptions to the employment -at- will doctrine begin-ning in the late 1950s. The bulk of the development of theseexceptions did not take place until the 1980s, but as we enterthe new millennium, the employment -at- will doctrine has beensignificantly eroded by statutory and common-law protec-tions against wrongful article focuses on the three major exceptions to theemployment-at- will doctrine, as developed in common law,including recognition of these exceptions in the 50 exceptions principally address terminations that, althoughthey technically comply with the employment -at- will require-ments, do not seem just.

4 The most widespread exception pre-vents terminations for reasons that violate a State s publicpolicy. Another widely recognized exception prohibits termi-nations after an implied contract for employment has beenestablished; such a contract can be created through employerrepresentations of continued employment , in the form of ei-ther oral assurances or expectations created by employerhandbooks, policies, or other written assurances. Finally, aminority of States has read an implied covenant of good faithand fair dealing into the employment relationship. The good-faith covenant has been interpreted in different ways, frommeaning that terminations must be for cause to meaning thatterminations cannot be made in bad faith or with malice in-tended. Only six western States Alaska, California, Idaho,Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming recognize all three of the ma-jor three southern States Florida, Georgia, andLouisiana and Rhode Island do not recognize any of thethree major exceptions to employment at will .

5 (See exhibit 1.)Public-policy exceptionUnder the public-policy exception to employment at will , anemployee is wrongfully discharged when the termination isagainst an explicit, well-established public policy of the example, in most States, an employer cannot terminate anemployee for filing a workers compensation claim after beinginjured on the job, or for refusing to break the law at the re-quest of the employer. The majority view among States is thatpublic policy may be found in either a State constitution,statute, or administrative rule, but some States have eitherrestricted or expanded the doctrine beyond this public-policy exception is the most widely accepted ex-ception, recognized in 43 of the 50 States. (See map 1.)Although the significant development of exceptions to em- ployment at will occurred in the 1980s, the first case to recog-nize a public-policy exception occurred in California in Petermann v.

6 International Brotherhood of Teamsters,5 Peter Petermann was hired by the Teamsters Union as a busi-Exhibit 1. Recognition of employment -at- will exceptions , by State, as of Oct. 1, 2000 of ofgood faith andfair dealingSOURCE: Data are from David J. Walsh and Joshua L. Schwarz, State Common Law Wrongful Discharge Doctrines: Up-date, Refine-ment, and Rationales, 33 Am. Bus. 645 (summer 1996). Case lawwas shepardized (verified) to update the recognition of exceptions throughOct. 1, Overturned previous decision that was contrary to current Labor ReviewJanuary 20015ness agent and was told by its secretary-treasurer that hewould be employed for as long as his work was his employment , Petermann was subpoenaed by theCalifornia legislature to appear before, and testify to, the As-sembly Interim Committee on Governmental Efficiency andEconomy, which was investigating corruption inside the Team-sters Union.

7 The union directed Petermann to make falsestatements to the committee during his testimony, but he in-stead truthfully answered all questions posed to him. He wasfired the day after his recognizing that an employer s right to discharge anemployee could be limited by considerations of public policy,the California appellate court found that the definition of pub-lic policy, while imprecise, covered acts that had a tendencyto be injurious to the public or against the public good. 6 Thecourt noted that, in California as elsewhere, perjury and thesolicitation of perjury were criminal offenses and that falsetestimony in any official proceeding hindered the proper ad-ministration of both public affairs and justice. Even thoughemployer and employee could otherwise be prosecuted underthe criminal law for perjury or solicitation of perjury, the courtfound that applying the public policy exception in this con-text would more fully effectuate California s declared policyagainst perjury.

8 Holding otherwise would encourage criminalconduct by both employer and employee, the court in other States were slow to follow California s other State considered adopting such an exception untilafter 1967, and only 22 States had considered the exceptionby the early Courts clearly struggled with the mean-ing of the phrase public policy, with some finding that apolicy was public only if it was clearly enunciated in a State sconstitution or statutes and others finding that a public policycould be inferred from a statute even where the statute neitherrequired nor permitted an employee to act in a manner thatsubsequently resulted in the employee s termination. Thecourts that refused to recognize the exception generally foundthat, given the vagueness of the term public policy, suchexceptions to employment at will should be created by legisla-tive, not judicial, 1981, one of the broadest definitions of public policy was adopted by the Illinois Supreme Court in Palmateer Harvester In this case, Ray6 Monthly Labor ReviewJanuary 2001 employment at WillPalmateer alleged that he was fired from his job with Interna-tional Harvester after he provided information to local lawenforcement authorities about potential criminal acts by acoworker and indicated that he would assist in any criminalinvestigation and subsequent trial.

9 The court noted that thetraditional employment -at- will rule was grounded in the no-tion that the employment relationship was based on recipro-cal rights, and because an employee was free to end employ-ment at any time for any condition merely by resigning, theemployer was entitled to the same right in return. Rejectingthis mutuality theory, the court pointed to the rising num-ber of large corporations that conduct increasingly special-ized operations, leading their employees skills to becomemore specialized in turn and, hence, less marketable. Thesechanges made it apparent to the court that employer and em-ployee are not on equal footing in terms of bargaining , the public-policy exception to the employment -at-willdoctrine was necessary to create a proper employer s interest in operating a business efficiently andprofitably, the employee s interest in earning a livelihood, andsociety s interest in seeing its public policies carried out.

10 10 The Illinois court found that matters of public policy strikeat the heart of a citizen s social rights, duties, and responsi-bilities and could be defined in the State constitution or Beyond that, when the constitution and statutes weresilent, judicial decisions could also create such policy, thecourt said in creating a broad scope for its exception. In thiscase, nothing in the Illinois Constitution or statutes requiredor permitted an employee to report potential criminal activityby a coworker. However, the court found that public policyfavored citizen crime fighters and the exposure of criminalactivity. Thus, Palmateer brought an actionable claim for retal-iatory years after Palmateer, the Wisconsin Supreme Courtrejected such an expansive definition of public policy andlimited the application of this employment -at- will exception inits State to cases in which the public policy was evidenced bya constitutional or statutory provision.


Related search queries