At-will employment considered harmful
Alphabet workers news
The abuses of easy retaliation permitted by the current at-will employment practice common throughout tech are starting to see more media coverage. Here are three recent news and information items on the topic.
1. New Yorker employees shut down work for half a day to fight for a just cause clause and against at-will employment
The New Yorker Union organized a half-day work stoppage on Thursday June 25 to support a just-cause clause in employment contracts. The info sheet linked from the Twitter announcement, and also presently on the union's web site, has more details:
https://twitter.com/newyorkerunion/status/1276138186499129344/photo/1
The New Yorker Union Demands Just Cause, No Exceptions
Today [June 25], the New Yorker Union is undertaking a half-day work stoppage. From 9 A.M. to 1 P.M., union members will not participate in the production or the promotion of content for the print magazine or the Web site. We are withholding our labor to demand just cause in our contract, and in protest of management’s resistance to our proposal and refusal to provide us with information necessary for bargaining...
The proposal to which the company objects reads, “There shall be no discipline or dismissal without just and sufficient cause.” Just cause is an essential worker protection and among the core reasons we organized our union. A just-cause provision guarantees due process, promotes equity and accountability, and creates consistent, transparent standards. It provides workers recourse, protects us from capricious managers, and empowers us to speak up about things like salary disparities and editorial missteps without fear of retaliation...
As the past few weeks have shown, racism, abuse, and exploitation often go unchecked at Condé Nast. The New Yorker is not exempt from these dynamics, and, as the first and largest union at Condé Nast, we intend to raise the bar for all of our colleagues... We demand a contract that reflects the value of our labor and the principles in our pages. The foundation of that contract is just cause—no exceptions.
2. New York Magazine: "Get rid of at-will employment"
In the wake of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects LGBTQ workers from discrimination, New York Magazine noted that to actually see this protection available in practice, we need to demolish at-will employment.
nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2020/06/at-will-employment-leaves-lgbtq-workers-vulnerable.html
To Truly Protect LGBTQ Workers, Get Rid of At-Will Employment
... The American boss enjoys immense power over the lives of his workers. At-will employment is one of the clearest examples of this imbalanced relationship at work. In at-will states, employers have the right to fire workers for nearly any reason — barring discrimination on the basis of sex or race. For this reason, collective bargaining agreements for unionized workers usually include just-cause provisions. Just-cause means that employers have to prove a pattern of poor performance over time, which gives workers a chance to improve before they lose their jobs. For vulnerable workers, just-cause is an important barrier to discrimination. Federal law already prohibits an employer from firing someone because she’s pregnant, but in the absence of just-cause, he can cite performance issues, or budget cuts, or the generic need for a new corporate direction, and show her promptly out the door.
“Then a worker has to assert that, ‘Oh, I think you’ve discriminated against me because I’m black, or because I’m gay or lesbian.’ But you’ve still lost your job, and you’re now fighting to get it back or to get some financial restitution,” Stettner said. That can burden workers who don’t have the independent means to hold their former employers accountable. Some politicians have advanced proposals that would ban at-will employment and replace it with something resembling just-cause language. During his primary campaign for president, Senator Bernie Sanders included the idea in his labor platform...
3. Clean Slate for Worker Power: at-will employment undermines worker protections
The Clean Slate for Worker Power initiative, an effort initiated by the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School to re-envision labor law and worker protections for the 21st century, includes a section on eliminating at-will employment within its extensive 132-page report.
Although the NLRA [National Labor Relations Act] makes it unlawful to fire workers for concerted action, the at-will rule nonetheless has a profoundly corrosive effect on workers’ ability to engage in organizing activity protected by law... It helps explain, for example, why workers too often acquiesce to abusive work environments, including those that are defined by harassment. It explains a lot about why workers—and women workers, in particular—hesitate to ask for better wages and working conditions. And, of course, it helps explain why workers are afraid to organize unions.
... the at-will rule of employment operates to undermine the effectiveness of the NLRA’s statutory prohibition on firing workers who engage in concerted activity. Although the statute explicitly bans such firings, the at-will rule makes it far too easy for employers to come up with pretextual reasons to discharge workers. Take, for example, a worker who is soliciting membership cards in an organizing campaign—activity clearly protected by the NLRA. The employer may not fire the worker for soliciting cards, but, under the at-will rule, the employer may fire the worker for nearly any other reason. Thus, the at-will rule enables the employer to rely upon—or manufacture—a huge range of other explanations for the discharge...
Replacing at-will employment with a just-cause dismissal rule would help correct both of these problems. ...this protection can help rebalance the power dynamic in the employment relationship and thereby empower employees to oppose discriminatory workplace practices and to engage in concerted activities.
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