Introduction
The purpose of this research is to prove that the employment at will doctrine does not protect the employee population in the United States. The fact that if you look at the way the doctrine is written it protects the employers and firms, and this as a result creates discrimination. This in itself creates an unsafe and sometime unstable work environment because of the potential for high turnover, costly training, and low morale amongst employees. There are certain factors that must be considered within the employee at will doctrine such as union protection, the economy, contracting verses employment, discrimination and the economic stance on the United States is currently in.
Employment laws
The employment laws that are currently in place for the United States are many; however there are questions that most employees ask when terminated from employment. The employment at will doctrine is as such:
According to Cornell Law School, (2013) “the employee-at-will doctrine refers to the presumption that employment is for an indefinite period of time and may be terminated either by employer or employee” (Cornell, 2013). This approach has been challenged in courts on numerous occasions because it is an interpretation of employment relationships. This in fact justifies discrimination and has propelled union relationships with employees seeking out protection and equal bargaining power. Such pro-union voices see unions as able to demand good faith bargaining on the part of the employer, job security, and other benefits (Cornell, 2013). The department of Labor is put in place to protect those that are receiving unlawful treatment, however without needed legal representation, the employment at will doctrine protects e...
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...Phoenix Custom Edition e-text] McGraw-Hill 2007, Boston MA.
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Cornel, (2013). Employment-at-will doctrine http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/employment-at-will_doctrine Jeanne Duquette Gorr, The Model Employment Termination Act: Fruitful Seed or Noxious Weed? 31 DUQLR 111 (fall 1992); see also Robert W. Fisher, “When workers are discharged—an overview,” Monthly Labor Review, June 1973, pp. 4–17
Nolo, law for all (nd). Employment At Will: What Does It Mean? http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/employment-at-will-definition-30022.html The Department of Labor, (2013). Retrieved from http://www.dol.gov/elaws/
In Laduzinski v. Alvarez & Marsal Taxand LLC, plaintiff was looking for a job with defendant, Alvarez & Marsal Taxand LLC. Plaintiff, Laduzinski, claimed that he was lured away from his job under false pretenses since defendants hired him to get access to his contacts. Nine months later, after plaintiff had given all his contacts, the manager of the Alvarez companies fired him because there was no work for him. Laduzinski brought a claim to recover damages for fraud in the inducement. The lower court dismissed plaintiff’s claims because plaintiff was an “at will” employee. After Laduzinski appealed, the issues were whether the complaint stated a cause of action for fraudulent inducement, despite that Laduzinski was an at-will employee; and whether the alleged misrepresentations were actionable statements of present fact or non-actionable future promises.
In 1898, congress passed the Erdman Act, which prohibited employers from firing employees based on if they join a union. An employer for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company, William Adair, violated the statute by firing O.B. Coppage for his participation in a labor organization. The court, in a 6 to 2 vote, held that the statute not only violated the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, it also held that congress’s power over interstate commerce does not extend to memberships in unions. The court uses substantive due process to read into the Fifth Amendment the laborers and employers right to ‘liberty of contract,” which Justice Harlan points out by citing the similar ruling in Lochner. The court reads it as the right of individuals to enter into contracts to either purchase or sell labor, which the law violated by limiting the rights of both the employer and employee. The court also rejected the argument that the law was within congressional power under interstate commerce by stating no logical correlation between union memberships and how it would affect intersta...
Sloane. A. A., Witney, F. (2010). LABOR RELATIONS (13th editions). Prentice Hall. Upper Saddle River, NJ
In 1980, a precedent was set in a Michigan court case involving a man named Charles Toussaint who was suing his employer, BlueCross Blue Shield, for wrongful termination based on the guidelines set in the employee manual (Alfred and Bertsche 33). The manual stated that employees would only be terminated for just cause, and the court decided that Blue Cross had violated the agreements in the employee manual (34). The court also ruled that even with Blue Cross’s efforts to provide a document that “issued non-binding guidelines” the employee manual was a contract and Toussiant was wrongfully terminated (34). After the precedent set by this case many employers and employees for that matter were reviewing their employee manuals for the type of ambiguous language that could allow them to get sued or sue. Consequently, a slew of wrongful termination lawsuits followed this one, which is why it is now important for employers to draft their manuals with experienced legal staff. Even with the best legal team and the perfect wording there is still no definite assurance that an employer will be completely protected from such lawsuits, but taking these preventive measures helps in the long run.
...lley, W. H., Jennings, K. M., Wolters, R. S., & Mathis, R. L. (2012). Employment & Labor Relations. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.
Bennett-Alexander, Dawn D. & Hartman, Laura P. (2001). Employment Law for Business (3rd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Primis Custom Publishing. Downloaded February 4, 2008 from the data base of http://www.eeoc.gov
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The purpose of this paper is to analyze a specific, hypothetical employment situation encountered and to include the information regarding employment conflicts, questions, grievances, lawsuits, etc., in terms of how the situation was handled or resolved. Employment conflicts are a constant issue everyday in any organization; it is how you handle them both legally and professionally that counts.
Moran, J. J. (2008). Employment law: New challenges in the business environment. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Bennett, Alexander, Hartman (2003), Employment Law for Business, Fourth Edition I., The Regulation of the Employment Relationship, The McGraw-Hill Companies.
Remington, J., Heiser, R., Smythe, C., & Sovereign, K. (2012). Human resources law (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
United States of America. National Employment Law Project. National Employment Law Project. N.p., Jan. 2011. Web. 18 May 2014.
As a consequence of the separate legal entity and limited liability doctrines within the UK’s unitary based system, company law had to develop responses to the ‘agency costs’ that arose. The central response is directors’ duties; these are owed by the directors to the company and operate as a counterbalance to the vast scope of powers given to the board. The benefit of the unitary board system is reflected in the efficiency gains it brings, however the disadvantage is clear, the directors may act to further their own interests to the detriment of the company. It is evident within executive remuneration that directors are placed in a stark conflict of interest position in that they may disproportionately reward themselves. The counterbalance to this concern is S175 Companies Act 2006 (CA 2006) this acts to prevent certain conflicts arising and punishes directors who find themselves in this position. Furthermore, there are specific provisions within the CA 2006 that empower third parties such as shareholders to influence directors’ remuneration.
The doctrine of employment at-will provides that employers may hire, transfer, promote, or terminate employees at any time for any cause, and employees have the right to resign at any time with or without notice (Reed & Bogardus, 2012)....