by Doug Collins

The Free Press

Currently, most employees in the US are employed "at will", a legal term which means your boss can fire you anytime for any reason, even for things you do outside of work. In fact, your boss is allowed to fire you for no reason at all. About the only limitations to this are anti-discrimination law (so no firings on the basis of race, gender, or age) and union contracts that have job security clauses.

Imagine instead a "just-cause dismissal" initiative which would only let bosses fire workers for fair reasons, like stealing from the till or refusing to follow reasonable rules. Joe-lunchbox Republicans, even homophobic ones, might vote for such an initiative because it would give them job security as well.

Indeed, it was probably working-class Republicans who monkeywrenched I-677. Voters intent on defeating gun control initiative I-676 turned out in droves last November, and "by and large, these were voters who were more apt to vote against gay rights," explains Steve Miller of Equality Washington (formerly Hands Off Washington, the sponsor of I-677). But even if there had been no gun control issue on the ballot, the gay rights measure might still have failed, since it was polling only about fifty-fifty a few weeks prior to the election.

Although anti-discrimination laws such as I-677 can be helpful in the case of hirings and promotions, just-cause dismissal laws would offer far better protection in the case of firings, and do so without playing the sometimes divisive identity cards of race, gender, or in the case of I-677, sexual orientation. Most developed countries have just-cause laws.

In nearby British Columbia there are common-law "grounds for termination" of non-union workers. These grounds include stealing from the till, assaulting someone in the workplace, gross insubordination, willfully coming late to work or continuing to violate a reasonable company policy after an explicit warning. (There is a loophole: alternatively, a BC boss can fire you US-style for any reason, but must then give you "appropriate notice" of up to eight weeks, allowing you to be securely employed while you look for a new position.)

"Yes, our neighbors up in BC are very progressive," remarks David Groves, a spokesperson for the Washington State Labor Council (WSLC), perhaps a bit tired of the comparison. "There's a different culture there about work and the right to your job."

Would Washingtonians really be unwilling to support fairness? Certainly a large percentage of voters here have been fired at least once in their lives, and many others understand that bosses can abuse power. Although many firings are justified, just-cause laws would simply ensure that any firings must be justified.

If a just-cause dismissal initiative was put to the ballot by a WSLC campaign, my guess is that not many voters would think, "I don't deserve any protection in my job. I'd better vote against it."

So what are the obstacles to such an initiative? First of all, state labor leaders don't seem familiar with just-cause laws. When asked at a union meeting in January why no such initiative had ever been attempted, WSLC president Rick Bender remarked, "Nobody's ever proposed that." Washington labor also seems isolated from more progressive neighbors: neither the WSLC office staff nor the AFL-CIO regional office staff could find the telephone number for the British Columbia Federation of Labour when I called asking for it.

In fact, just-cause laws would be a godsend for comparatively weak US unions. Such laws would make it much harder for companies to unfairly fire workers for union organizing.

Even so, David Groves of the WSLC seems as yet uninterested in anything this ambitious. "There's not much precedence in this country. This is a country that prides itself on free enterprise. As it is, businesses are already crying that they're so regulated."

I say, let them cry some more.

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Contents this page were published in the March/April, 1998 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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