Employment At Will

Imagine you work for an employer, you are not in a union, your job is not protected by tenure and you didn’t sign any kind of binding contract for employment. Your manager can let you go at anytime if they want to. Now some people say this is not fair. There is this term called employment –at-will. According to the supervision text employment-at –will is a “legal concept that employers can dismiss employees at anytime and for any reasons, except unlawful discrimination and contractual or other restrictions (Leonard 193).” This was first set forth in Payne v. Western & Atlantic R.R. Co. it was stated “… to discharge or retain employees at will for good cause or for no cause, or even for bad cause without thereby being guilty of an unlawful act per se…a right which an employee can exercise in the same way… (Twomey 584).” Meaning, an employee is under no obligation to continue employment with an employer if they don’t want to; they are free to terminate their employment at any time as well. More than eighty percent of the nation’s workforce is employed at will and they don’t have the backing of a union, the government or individual negotiators to intervene in “no cause” termination. “The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws adopted the Model Employment Termination Act, which individual states may enact to protect the millions of at-will workers employed in the United States from being discharged without “good cause (Twomey 585).” This paper will discuss the exceptions used to determine if there was a wrongful discharge, look at cases for examples and the states positions on recognizing exceptions. It does seem unfair for an employer to terminate an employee without cause. But our federal and state governments h...

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