[DRAFT] Prohibition of At-Will Termination

[Bears Armed]

"As I said, most companies do not go suddenly in a situation of existential risk."

OOC
In RL, loss of business during the Coronavirus pandemic, possibly involving government-enforced closure for the duration, could kill off quite a few previously-healthy businesses that rely on fast cash-flow quite rapidly.

[Greifenburg]

OOC
In RL, loss of business during the Coronavirus pandemic, possibly involving government-enforced closure for the duration, could kill off quite a few previously-healthy businesses that rely on fast cash-flow quite rapidly.

OOC:
In the case of a pandemic or other catastrophes like this, at-will termination will most likely not save your business anyway and is probably one of your least concerns at that moment, not to mention that this is normally the situation where the government will try to step in to prevent mass insolvencies. Also, extreme cases like this make generally a bad defence for generally abusive practices. Imagine someone made the case "In a democracy, a totalitarian mass murderer might be elected, therefore we shouldn't use democracy as it's obviously bad". I'm sure most people would shake their head at that conclusion.

[Cosmosplosion]

"I recognize that at times a business may indeed be operating under financial stress and relieving themselves of employees they may deem unnecessary could be a savior for their business in the long run. I have added additional language that I believe quashes concerns regarding this topic."

[Cisairse]

I like this idea, but feel this proposal needs more work.

Defines “at-will termination”, for the purposes of this resolution, as an agreement between an employee and employer that the employer may terminate the employment relationship at anytime for any or no reason, with no notice, and no liability for lost compensation or damages,

This line is rather clunky grammatically. I'd change it to something like

Defines "at-will termination" as an agreement between an employee and their employer allowing the employer to terminate the employment relationship at any time for any or no reason, without notice, or without liability for lost compensation or damages,

I also just want to make a point that even if you reject my grammar restructure, I strongly am in favor of changing the "and" in your wording to "or." The way you have it, at-will employment that lets an employer fire an employee for no reason and no liability but with 1 hour's notice is not banned.

Bans the practice of at-will termination, with the following exceptions;

- The employee agreed to be employed in a seasonal or temporary capacity,

What is the rationale for allowing seasonal employees to be terminated at-will? It is my understanding that seasonable employment contracts generally stipulate a fixed "season" (term of work). It seems to be in the spirit of this proposal to protect those workers from sudden termination too, no?

- The employer can demonstrate they are operating at a loss,

I believe some of my colleagues have addressed this already, but this should absolutely be rewritten into a clause which more broadly protects the financial interests of companies which are not presently operating at a loss.

Requires employers to provide reasonable notice to an employee prior to their termination, or to provide compensation equal to which would had been received had reasonable notice been given, upon termination.

I'm a pedantic son-of-a-bitch, but my reading of this says that it is a no-op unless we define "reasonable" because companies could say that thirty seconds is reasonable.

Perhaps we should establish an arbitration organization? Does the WA have a labor relations board?

[Araraukar]

OOC: Imagine someone made the case "In a democracy, a totalitarian mass murderer might be elected, therefore we shouldn't use democracy as it's obviously bad". I'm sure most people would shake their head at that conclusion.

OOC: Literally why Araraukar is a dictatorship. Though with the added twist that the people voted to make it one. (They had IC reasons after watching what happened to a neigbouring country.) And I wouldn't claim it to be a reasonable reason, but the RL world is rarely reasonable either.

Perhaps we should establish an arbitration organization? Does the WA have a labor relations board?

Someone has the list of all the committees floating around here, but adding a committee into the process does certainly not speed the process up. The more bureaucracy there is in something, the slower it's going to happen. And the out-of-work worker, meanwhile, might not be entitled to basic welfare (because they're listed as being employed until the committee decides one way or another) but not get paid by their employer, because in their opinion their job contract has been rightfully terminated. Also, I seriously would not want to be the worker that their employer is forced to keep employing, by some international body's uncaring decision.

[Cisairse]

Someone has the list of all the committees floating around here, but adding a committee into the process does certainly not speed the process up. The more bureaucracy there is in something, the slower it's going to happen. And the out-of-work worker, meanwhile, might not be entitled to basic welfare (because they're listed as being employed until the committee decides one way or another) but not get paid by their employer, because in their opinion their job contract has been rightfully terminated. Also, I seriously would not want to be the worker that their employer is forced to keep employing, by some international body's uncaring decision.

Those are all legitimate points, but, then, how do we achieve our goals here?