The Doctrine of Employment at Will | Losing or Leaving a Job

Once again, for the value of its shock: People employed in private industry have no automatic legal right to their jobs.

That is because of the long-established legal doctrine of employment at will—a term you are most likely to hear cited by your boss or your company’s lawyers if you speak up and protest your dismissal. An employer’s right to unilaterally determine whether or not you should stay on the payroll stems from a 1894 case (Payne v. Western & Atlantic RR, 81 Tenn. 507), in which the court ruled that employers do not need a reason to fire employees; they may fire any or all of their workers at will—that is, at any time and for any reason that is not illegal. Even if the reason for dismissal is morally wrong, the court held, no legal wrong has occurred and the government has no basis to intervene.

The management of America’s factories was still in the experimental stage in the 1890s when that case was decided. The business community successfully argued then, and in cases that followed, that factories could not be operated profitably unless employers were free to hire and fire as they chose. The employment at will doctrine has been reinforced over and over again by subsequent court rulings—and expanded to include not only factories but also virtually all other types of private industry jobs.

But the doctrine has been weakened a bit since the 1970s by rulings in wrongful discharge suits in which former employees question the legality of their firings and by some new laws that are more favorable to employees. For example, in Montana, employees who have completed a probationary period can only be fired for good cause. (Mont. Code Ann. § 39-2-904.) And a federal law, the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, or USERRA, protects those who have served in the uniformed services from being fired for any reason but good cause up to a year after they return to the job. And some states have made it illegal to fire employees for taking time off to care for a sick child or because they are gay or lesbian.