Just cause is a common standard in employment law, as a form of job security. When a person is terminated for just cause, it means that they have been terminated for misconduct, or another sufficient reason.[1] A person terminated for just cause is generally not entitled to notice severance, nor unemployment benefits depending on local laws.[2]
The standard of just cause provides important protections against arbitrary or unfair termination and other forms of inappropriate workplace discipline.[3] Just cause has become a common standard in labor arbitration, and is included in labor union contracts as a form of job security. Typically, an employer must prove just cause before an arbitrator in order to sustain an employee's termination, suspension, or other discipline. Usually, the employer has the burden of proof in discharge cases or if the employee is in the wrong.
In the workplace, just cause is a burden of proof or standard that an employer must meet to justify discipline or discharge. Just cause usually refers to a violation of a company policy or rule. In some cases, an employee may commit an act that is not specifically addressed within the employers' policies but one of which the employer believes warrants discipline or discharge. In such instances, the employer must be confident that they can defend their decision.[citation needed]
When an arbitrator looks at a discipline dispute, the arbitrator first asks whether the employee's wrongdoing has been proven by the employer, and then asks whether the method of discipline should be upheld or modified. In 1966, an arbitrator, Professor Carroll Daugherty, expanded these principles into seven tests for just cause.[4][5] The concepts encompassed within his seven tests are still frequently used by arbitrators when deciding discipline cases.[6]
Was the employee forewarned of the consequences of his or her actions?
Are the employer's rules reasonably related to business efficiency and performance the employer might reasonably expect from the employee?
Was an effort made before discipline or discharge to determine whether the employee was guilty as charged?
Was the investigation conducted fairly and objectively?
Did the employer obtain substantial evidence of the employee's guilt?
Were the rules applied fairly and without discrimination?
Was the degree of discipline reasonably related to the seriousness of the employee's offense and the employee's past record?
The last test, the degree of discipline, is important because arbitrators want to ensure that the "punishment fits the crime." An employer's use of progressive discipline often gives the employer an advantage in arbitration.
The culture of the community or community standards sometimes play an important role in how just cause is defined, especially if there are issues of immorality. What is accepted in an urban and liberal community may not be accepted in a rural and religiously conservative community. The courts or arbitrator who will rule on a challenge to the discipline may be a product of those communities. Just cause can become controversial in instances when the employer's personnel policies do not address a specific act but the employer believes that just cause exists. For example, if an employee is arrested and charged with a misdemeanor, the employer may deem that sufficient cause for dismissal, even if the employee is not incarcerated or convicted.
Arbitration, in the context of the law of the United States, is a form of alternative dispute resolution. Specifically, arbitration is an alternative to litigation through which the parties to a dispute agree to submit their respective evidence and legal arguments to a third party for resolution. In practice, arbitration is generally used as a substitute for litigation. In some contexts, an arbitrator has been described as an umpire.
Collective bargaining is a process of negotiation between employers and a group of employees aimed at agreements to regulate working salaries, working conditions, benefits, and other aspects of workers' compensation and rights for workers. The interests of the employees are commonly presented by representatives of a trade union to which the employees belong. A collective agreement reached by these negotiations functions as a labour contract between an employer and one or more unions, and typically establishes terms regarding wage scales, working hours, training, health and safety, overtime, grievance mechanisms, and rights to participate in workplace or company affairs. Such agreements can also include 'productivity bargaining' in which workers agree to changes to working practices in return for higher pay or greater job security.
In employment law, constructive dismissal, also called disguised dismissal, constructive discharge or constructive termination, occurs when an employee resigns due to the employer creating a hostile work environment. This often serves as a tactic to avoid payment of statutory severance pay and benefits. In essence, although the employee resigns, the resignation is not truly voluntary but rather a response to intolerable working conditions imposed by the employer. These conditions can include unreasonable work demands, harassment, or significant changes to the employment terms without the employee’s consent.
In United States labor law, at-will employment is an employer's ability to dismiss an employee for any reason, and without warning, as long as the reason is not illegal. When an employee is acknowledged as being hired "at will", courts deny the employee any claim for loss resulting from the dismissal. The rule is justified by its proponents on the basis that an employee may be similarly entitled to leave their job without reason or warning. The practice is seen as unjust by those who view the employment relationship as characterized by inequality of bargaining power.
Termination of employment or separation of employment is an employee's departure from a job and the end of an employee's duration with an employer. Termination may be voluntary on the employee's part (resignation), or it may be at the hands of the employer, often in the form of dismissal (firing) or a layoff. Dismissal or firing is usually thought to be the employee's fault, whereas a layoff is generally done for business reasons outside the employee's performance.
Dismissal is the termination of employment by an employer against the will of the employee. Though such a decision can be made by an employer for a variety of reasons, ranging from an economic downturn to performance-related problems on the part of the employee, being fired has a strong stigma in some cultures.
An employment contract or contract of employment is a kind of contract used in labour law to attribute rights and responsibilities between parties to a bargain. The contract is between an "employee" and an "employer". It has arisen out of the old master-servant law, used before the 20th century. Employment contracts relies on the concept of authority, in which the employee agrees to accept the authority of the employer and in exchange, the employer agrees to pay the employee a stated wage.
United States labor law sets the rights and duties for employees, labor unions, and employers in the US. Labor law's basic aim is to remedy the "inequality of bargaining power" between employees and employers, especially employers "organized in the corporate or other forms of ownership association". Over the 20th century, federal law created minimum social and economic rights, and encouraged state laws to go beyond the minimum to favor employees. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 requires a federal minimum wage, currently $7.25 but higher in 29 states and D.C., and discourages working weeks over 40 hours through time-and-a-half overtime pay. There are no federal laws, and few state laws, requiring paid holidays or paid family leave. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 creates a limited right to 12 weeks of unpaid leave in larger employers. There is no automatic right to an occupational pension beyond federally guaranteed Social Security, but the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 requires standards of prudent management and good governance if employers agree to provide pensions, health plans or other benefits. The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 requires employees have a safe system of work.
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 is a United States labor law that forbids employment discrimination against anyone, at least 40 years of age, in the United States. In 1967, the bill was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The ADEA prevents age discrimination and provides equal employment opportunity under the conditions that were not explicitly covered in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The act also applies to the standards for pensions and benefits provided by employers, and requires that information concerning the needs of older workers be provided to the general public.
Progressive discipline is a system of discipline where the penalties increase upon repeat occurrences.
WorkChoices was the name given to changes made to the federal industrial relations laws in Australia by the Howard government in 2005, being amendments to the Workplace Relations Act 1996 by the Workplace Relations Amendment Act 2005, sometimes referred to as the Workplace Relations Amendment Act 2005, that came into effect on 27 March 2006.
A severance package is pay and benefits that employees may be entitled to receive when they leave employment at a company unwillfully. In addition to their remaining regular pay, it may include some of the following:
Eastern Associated Coal Corp. v. Mine Workers, 531 U.S. 57 (2000), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that public policy considerations do not require courts to refuse to enforce an arbitration award ordering an employer to reinstate an employee truck driver who twice tested positive for marijuana.
Workplace privacy is related with various ways of accessing, controlling, and monitoring employees' information in a working environment. Employees typically must relinquish some of their privacy while in the workplace, but how much they must do can be a contentious issue. The debate rages on as to whether it is moral, ethical and legal for employers to monitor the actions of their employees. Employers believe that monitoring is necessary both to discourage illicit activity and to limit liability. With this problem of monitoring employees, many are experiencing a negative effect on emotional and physical stress including fatigue, lowered employee morale and lack of motivation within the workplace. Employers might choose to monitor employee activities using surveillance cameras, or may wish to record employees activities while using company-owned computers or telephones. Courts are finding that disputes between workplace privacy and freedom are being complicated with the advancement of technology as traditional rules that govern areas of privacy law are debatable and becoming less important.
A grievance is a formal complaint that is raised by an employee towards an employer within the workplace. There are many reasons as to why a grievance can be raised, and also many ways to go about dealing with such a scenario. Reasons for filing a grievance in the workplace can be as a result of, but not limited to, a breach of the terms and conditions of an employment contract, raises and promotions, or lack thereof, as well as harassment and employment discrimination.
In labour law, unfair dismissal is an act of employment termination made without good reason or contrary to the country's specific legislation.
Michael A. Smyth v. The Pillsbury Company, 914 F. Supp. 97 was decided on January 18, 1996, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Michael A. Smyth was a regional operations manager at the Pillsbury Company. Smyth had a company email account that he was able to access from work and home. Pillsbury, on multiple occasions, told its employees that all email communications were private, confidential, and that there was no danger of the messages being intercepted and used as grounds for discipline or termination.
South African labour law regulates the relationship between employers, employees and trade unions in the Republic of South Africa.
In law, wrongful dismissal, also called wrongful termination or wrongful discharge, is a situation in which an employee's contract of employment has been terminated by the employer, where the termination breaches one or more terms of the contract of employment, or a statute provision or rule in employment law. Laws governing wrongful dismissal vary according to the terms of the employment contract, as well as under the laws and public policies of the jurisdiction.
A termination of employment in Argentina is the rescission of an employee's employment contract, decided unilaterally by the employer, with or without a cause. As the requirements to proceed with a termination of employment and the consequences of the decision are regulated by each piece of legislation, there are differences depending on the country whose legislation is to be applied. This article refers exclusively to termination of employees who, having worked in Argentina, are governed by the laws of that country.
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