You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don’t you call me, ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
Sixteen Tons, Merle Travis
Most of us aren’t coal miners, but we’ve all got our burden to bear, and the story of getting shafted by your employer is something that working people get. You don’t have to be a communist to understand that what Republicans denounce as class warfare feels like self defense when you’re on the receiving end of the trickle down economy. You load 16 tons and what do you get, another day older, and deeper in debt. And when they’ve used you up they spit you out without so much as a dime to recognize the sacrifice and hard work you’ve done for years. The employment at will doctrine means that most American worker have no recourse if they are fired for no fault of their own, and no right to compensation.
America is an at-will country.
Many workers in the United States believe that satisfactory job performance should be rewarded with,among other benefits, job security. However, this expectation that employees will not be fired if they perform their jobs well
has eroded in recent decades in the face of an increased incidence of mass layoffs, reductions in companies’ workforces, and job turnover. 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 or employee for any reason whatsoever.The employment-at-will doctrine avows that, when an employee does not have a written employment contract and the term of employment is of indefinite duration, the employer can terminate the employee for good cause, bad cause, or no cause at all.
There are three exceptions to the at will doctrine: Public-policy exception, Implied-contract exception, and Covenant of good faith and fair dealing.
Public-policy exception
Under the public policy doctrine an employee can’t be fired for refusing to commit acts that violate the word of the law, while in a smaller number this has ben expanded upon to include acts that violate the spirit of the law. This means that it’s illegal to fire a worker for filing a workers compensation claim, and in the second sense an employer that instructed workers to hide information from regulatory authorities would be protected.
Implied-contract exception
Under the implied-contract exception, an employee can’t be fired if they’ve been provided a handbook that lists their responsibilities, because this implies a contract between the employer and employee. In certain states, this includes oral agreements, while in others a disclaimer nullifies the implied contract.
Covenant of good faith and fair dealing
Under the covenant of good faith and fair dealing exception, a contractual obligation is held inherent in every employment relationship. Under this standard an employer has to offer justification for firing an employee. While this is limited to a small number of states in the US, this is by far the most common standard in OECD countries.
The American Exception
The most striking aspect of US labor law is how little protection it offers employee when compared to laws in other OECD countries. The lack of protection for workers in the relationship with employers places American workers at a grave disadvantage when compared to workers in the other industrialized countries of the OECD.
Among OECD countries only the US and Japan subscribe to a strict “at-will” employment relationship, while Austria, Swizterland, and Belgium limit the requirment that employers justify dismissal to specific categories.
The US stands alone among OECD countries in not requiring that employers offer some statutory compensation in cases where employees are dimissed without reason.
In most OECD countries, employees who were fired without reason have a claim to reinstatement. Among OECD countries, only Switzerland has no allowance for reinstatment, while in Belgium, this is again limited to certain job categories. In the United States with (extremely) rare exceptions, workers have no right to reinstatement.
The lack of protection offered to American workers marks the United States as an exception among the developed nations of the world. That our government thinks so little of working people to no provide this even some sliver of protection says much about what our nation has become. Even more so than with the minimum wage, this is an opportunity for the Democratic party to become the party of labor again. We need to make workplace democracy a basis of our promise to the American people.
Workplace Democracy
The Democratic party must make clear that the rights of citizens do not end at the front door of the workplaces.
- The at-will employment doctrine should be eliminated and replaced by an employment standard that recognizes that inherent to every employment relationship is an obligation by employers not to end that relationship without reason.
- In the case that employer ends the working relationship without reason, they should be obligated by law to pay a severance payment equal to 2 weeks pay for each year served, limited to a maximum 24 month payment.
- In the interest of permitting sincere efforts to employ workers new to the labor force, an exception would be made to allow workers in need of job training to be hired under a provisional training contract when a certification of need is made by state workforce development authorities. This would be limited to one 6 month term at which time the employer would be obligated to either hire the worker under a regular contract or eliminate the position. An exception to this would be made for non-profit and governmental agencies involved in job training.
- Employers should be reguired to carry medical coverage equivalent or greater than Medicare on all workers, and in cases of unjustified dismissal should be required to continue this coverage until the worker is covered by another employer medical plan or 2 years, whichever is greater. At 2 years, employees would default onto the Medicare plan.
- In case of unjust dismissal, workers should have the right to reinstatement. Employers wishing to opt out of this would be required to double the severance payment made to the employee and assume the responsibility to carry medical coverage until the worker is covered by another employer medical plan.
Conclusion
I await the argument that without the lack of worker protections that we have now, employment opportunties would not exist.
I want to respond by asking whether we as a nation feel that jobs reguiring the rights of workers as citizens should be allowed to exist.
Voluntary servitude and slavery are both working relationships that if permitted would allow for the creation of millions of new jobs, however they are not permitted because they are antithetical to the conception we have of ourself as a democracy. Furthermore, by eliminating the wild gyrations in consumer demand that come when workers fear for their employment, the economy could be stabilized. I argue that a slower, stable, sustainable growth of the economy is preferable to one of boom and bust that creates inequality, again anthema to a nation that is a democracy.
