Defending At-Will Employment on Labor Day
An unabashedly libertarian post for a pinko holiday.
As a free-marketeer, Labor Day strikes me as a little pink. Regardless as to the holiday’s political hue, its observance provided me the opportunity to see two dear friends. For this, I am grateful.
I met up with friends K, a young woman, and C, a young man, at Kimberly’s for cocktails and appetizers.1 We engaged in the usual repartee, catching each other up on work, school, &c., when K recounted the inspiration of this post: She was moved from her original post to another after a much older (male) coworker solicited her Instagram, phone number, and insisted on texting her interminably into odd hours of the night.
Unprofessional, inappropriate, and [insert colorful adjectives here to express my disapproval of this behavior].
Since K is early in her tenure, management was checking in on her to see how she was doing. The manager—a woman (anecdotal point to viewpoint epistemologists, here)—heard K’s subtle intimations about the discomfort she felt at work due to her coworker’s behavior loud and clear; she immediately set about ensuring the safety and professionalism of the work environment—she fired the man causing K undue anxiety.
How was the manager able to enforce standards of professional conduct? At-will employment: After talking to both of her employees, gathering the facts, and judging the matter for herself, the manager took swift action to protect her (understandably) intimidated employee, customers, business, and reputation.
In a (classically) liberal society, we operate under a presumption of personal freedom. Personal freedom comprises the economic as much as the political. One expression of this freedom is that of (dis)association, e.g., ending the employment of someone who assented to an at-will employment contract. The expression of this particular freedom is properly exercised as a way to internalize the negative externality of those behaviors that, while not morally impermissible (i.e. do not violate the rights of others), are properly judged as unacceptable in the workplace, public, and polite society.
The long and short of it: at-will employment protects upstanding employees by empowering employers to give ne’er-do-wells the ax.
In closing, many thanks to K and C for their company. I always enjoy getting together with these two for thoughtful conversation, filling food, luxurious libations, and the general sense of peace, stability, and maturity that they exude. I am sure they will inspire much more reflection, consideration, and pontification.
Sleep well, readers!
I am withholding the names of these friends—whose initials may or may not be “K” and “C”—and details of their employment out of consideration for their privacy. But you already figured that much out for yourself, rendering this footnote moot.