"Just-cause" protections will revolutionize job security for 70,000 fast-food workers--and millions

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Most Americans Can Be Fired for No Reason at Any Time, But a New Law in New York Could Change That


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-06-21/new-york-just-cause-law-is-about-to-make-workers-much-tougher-to-fire?utm_medium=social&cmpid=socialflow-twitter-businessweek&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_content=businessweek

“Just-cause” protections will revolutionize job security for 70,000 fast-food workers—and millions more Americans may benefit soon, too.

Illustration: Michael DeForge for Bloomberg Businessweek

June 21, 2021, 3:00 AM CDT

Melody Walker had just finished working the lunch rush at a Chipotle in New York City when her manager walked up and told her, in front of several co-workers, that she was fired. Walker says she’d worked there almost a year without any complaints from the boss. When the 36-year-old single mom asked him for an explanation, he said it was because she wasn’t smiling. (This was 2018, pre-masks.) “There were no customers there to smile at,” Walker recalls. As she packed up her stuff, she told inquiring co-workers why she was leaving early. “They thought it was wrong, too, but what can they say?” she says. “Because they’ll get fired, too.”

This is how the U.S. works under at-will employment, a legal standard that allows companies to fire people for almost any reason—and sometimes for no reason at all. Unlike in other wealthy countries, where bosses generally have to provide just cause for termination, at-will positions account for most U.S. jobs. This probably includes your job, dear reader. Most white-collar and professional workers aren’t any more legally protected from their bosses’ whims than Walker was. Google software engineers, Wells Fargo & Co. bankers, and Mayo Clinic surgeons work at will. So do humble Bloomberg reporters. The only Americans with a higher standard of protection tend to be limited to the C-suite, the public sector, the nation’s dwindling unionized workplaces, and—because of a complex, decades-old compromise—Montana.

Workers who spoke with Bloomberg Businessweek say they’ve been fired for noting that a manager showed up two hours late, for suffering a panic attack on the job after being subjected to racist harassment, and for disclosing to co-workers that they’d contracted Covid-19. In April a federal judge in Alabama ruled that a silicon manufacturer was within its rights to fire a Black employee for refusing to cut his dreadlocks. Firing employees for raising safety concerns is illegal, as is firing them for trying to unionize, or for being Black, pregnant, transgender, old, or Muslim. But at-will employment makes those protections difficult to enforce, and the penalties don’t stop companies from canning people.

“It took me months to get another job and put my family’s life back on track,” Walker testified to city lawmakers at a hearing last year. “I don’t want anyone to have to go through what I did.” (Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. said in a statement to Businessweek that it’s “committed to creating a safe and engaging work environment” and that it has an 800 number for anonymous complaints.).............................

[Phoenix61]

1. When people wonder why the younger generation

has no job loyalty at-will employment is the reason. It causes lots of issues not the least of which is crappy managers and supervisors who are unable and/or unwilling to do the job of managing people.