Thursday, August 17, 2006

Good News Sometimes Comes in Small Packages

It's not headline news, but it's good news for employers and for employees -- who benefit when their employers are allowed to operate their businesses for a profit. PointofLaw.com has the story:

Courts in [California] had been in the forefront of chipping away employers' right to terminate employees at will, a process I documented in my book The Excuse Factory some years ago. But the trend has been in retreat in recent years, and earlier this month the state Supreme Court delighted employers with a ruling declaring that when a company tells a worker that employment is at will, it means just that. . . .

The California Supreme Court . . . threw out the appellate precedent which had creatively conjured a tenure promise out of the very effort to deny one. . . .

Being offered a job, with no guarantee of getting to keep it forever or of it never changing its character. Imagine that.

Yes, imagine that. It might be an incentive to do a good job, help your employer turn a profit, and earn more money as a result. The chipping away at the doctrine of at-will employment by the courts has enabled the "worst and the weakest" to keep jobs for which they are not qualified or that they do poorly, to the detriment of their fellow employees.