‘Just Cause’ Job Protections

The Problem

In the United States, most employers can legally fire workers without warning, an explanation, or severance pay. This system, known as “at-will” employment, can cause great harm to U.S. workers and their families when the paycheck they depend on is there one day and gone the next. By granting employers excessive control over workers’ livelihoods, at-will employment undermines workers’ ability to speak up about mistreatment and perpetuates longstanding racial inequities in the workplace and labor market. The at-will relationship creates an enormous power imbalance between workers and their employers, with far-reaching consequences in the workplace and beyond.

Outside of the United States, most industrialized countries around the world adopted explicit worker protections against unjust dismissals throughout the 20th century. In the U.S. however, “at-will” employment became the norm, tracing its roots to post–Civil War white employer backlash after the abolition of slavery, forced labor, and debt bondage. While attempts to limit at-will employment have yielded a patchwork of limited state and federal exceptions to the doctrine, by and large, employers have been successful in legal and lobbying efforts to maintain broad adherence to the “at-will” principles that courts first adopted more than a century ago.

With rising precarity in U.S. labor markets as employers increasingly deploy AI, including digital “bossware” technologies to manage their staff, workers urgently need increased job security. In fact, a Chinese court recently ruled that China’s protections against unfair discharge prohibit employers from dismissing workers to automate their jobs with AI.

The Solution

For the first time in decades, U.S. workers are organizing to replace the at-will employment system with just cause job protections. Fast-food workers in New York City were at the forefront of this movement, successfully campaigning for a local law prohibiting unfair and abrupt firings in their industry. They were followed by parking lot workers in Philadelphia who won similar protections. New York this year extended its just cause protections to app-based ride-hail and delivery workers employed by companies like Uber and DoorDash who face unfair firings or “deactivations,” building on more modest protections enacted in Seattle and Washington State for that industry. Ithaca, New York is considering legislation that would make it the first city to extend just cause protections to workers in all industries. And rising public concern about corporations’ use of AI to automate tasks and surveil and manage workers is spurring more interest in protections like just cause that can help stabilize jobs and protect workers against exploitation.

Some of the key provisions we recommend in order to make just cause protections effective include:

• Requiring the employer to show a good performance-based reason for discharging a worker, with the burden of proof resting with the employer.
• Requiring that economic lay-offs be supported by evidence of economic hardship, and that staff redundancy created by deployment of AI or other automation should not be adequate grounds for an economic layoff.
•  Clarifying that certain reasons, such as refusing unsafe work, are protected activities and not grounds for discharge.
• Providing advance notice to workers of performance issues and the opportunity to address them before being discharged.
• Providing equal coverage for temp and staffing employees.
• Protecting against extreme surveillance and electronic monitoring.
• Guaranteeing severance pay to all workers who are discharged.
• Protecting app-based workers against “deactivation” without just cause.
• Providing strong remedies and relief, including the right to reinstatement, money damages, and additional employer penalties.
• Ensuring that just cause protections can be enforced in court—regardless of employers’ attempts to limit enforcement through coercive waivers such as forced arbitration requirements and class or collective action waivers.

As our labor markets become more precarious, all workers need greater job security and protection against abrupt and unfair firings. Expanding just cause protections — ultimately to all U.S. workers — is key for ensuring the type of stable, safe, and equitable employment that workers need in order for families and communities to thrive.