The Resiliency of At-Will Employment: The Political Limits of Worker Rights

• In Event: Organizing With and Against the State

Abstract

The twentieth century has been witness to major reform efforts designed to undermine the doctrine of employment at-will, particularly during the New Deal and the Civil Rights Era. But as we enter the third decade of the 21st century, the reality of the at-will employee remains both entrenched and dominant. At-will, which enables employees to leave their job, but also entails employers to fire their employees without reason unless subject to contract, still applies to most Americans. Part of the responsibility for this, ironically, is the initial success of the labor movement in the middle of the twentieth century. It set up a process by which at-will workers had the opportunity to join a union and choose contractual protection. The labor movement quickly set out to expand and mobilize sectors of the economy to do just that. But as the labor movement has declined, a renewed focus on attacking the global-nature of the at-will doctrine is arguably in order. As it stands, much of the focus today continues to be coming from different sectors focused on different rights—collective bargaining rights pushed by labor unions, racial, gender, age, disability rights pushed by civil rights organizations, but less so a focus on the at-will doctrine itself. This paper will explore both the move to challenge at-will at the universal level, and the reasons such a move has so far struggled.

Authors

• Alina Dunlap, Princeton University

• Paul Frymer, Princeton University