Talk:At-will employment/Archives/2013

Hyde's Research

I am about to remove a statement that is supposedly supported by Alan Hyde's book, Working in Silicon Valley: Economic and Legal Analysis of a High-Velocity Labor Market. While Hyde's book is certainly relevant to this page, it does not seem to support the statement that the ref is placed next to, which says this:

Although harsh upon employees, the doctrine of at-will employment is widely credited as one of the major factors behind the strength of the U.S. economy, and in particular, in making possible the success of Silicon Valley as an entrepreneur-friendly environment.

I do not have access to the book itself, but the Journal of High Technology Law says the following in its review of the book:

Mr. Hyde specifically states that the book is not a guide on how to re-create Silicon Valley’s distinctive labor structure elsewhere.

It seems that by necessity, Hyde's book does not proscribe economic policies and/or legal regimes that would promote the sort of thriving economy found in Silicon Valley; however, the current version of the page would lead one to believe otherwise. If anyone would like to reintroduce this statement, please provide clarification and/or qualification.

Update: I just committed the change. I will send an email to professor Hyde to get his opinion about this matter. --Danielx (talk) 08:26, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

An additional quote from the same book review seems to indicate that the book actually supports the opposite:

However, as in a “traditional” labor market, regulation for the benefit of employees is a must and the “flexible” labor market creates further legal quandaries. Mr. Hyde acknowledges that public policy and legal intervention can provide “social safety nets” for workers involved in high-velocity labor markets. Flexibility attributed to fast paced developments in Silicon Valley does not excuse employers from providing traditional benefits, such as health insurance and pensions. He also recognizes that constant job changes make it that much more difficult to implement social protections for workers.

FWIW, as a high-tech worker, I would say this is very consistent with my personal experience. --Danielx (talk) 08:50, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

A high-tech worker? Please do some high-tech research (it's called Google) before challenging valid references.

If you had bothered to run "at-will employment Silicon Valley" through Google Books, you would have come across the Hyde book right away. How do you think I found it?

On page 93, Mr. Hyde wrote: "Silicon Valley is famous for all types of 'flexible' labor contracting...On this view, which is quite correct as far as it goes, its economic growth reflects the ease with which labor may be hired, fired, and directed to productive use, and contrasts with rigid, or regulated labor markets...Silicon Valley's high-velocity labor market reflects some heavy use of some interesting institutions that facilitate hiring labor for short terms. The most important institution of 'flexible' labor, though rarely appreciated as such, is the U.S. contract for employment...[which] may be terminated at will."

I hope this responds to your concerns.--Coolcaesar (talk) 06:25, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Covenant of Good Faith & Fair Dealing

I edited the rather optomistic comment recognizing ICGFFD as supporting causes of action for wrongful termination based upon a breach of the covenant. Not true in all States recognizing this quasi-implied contract claim, and the trend line of the cases has been heading the other way.

Alltone

Alltone 04:32, 19 April 2007 (UTC) Hi all! Even is prohibited, At Will Employment is used to discriminate against minorities in United States. This American Law is a dangerous weapon that must be abolished.

Martín R. Rodríguez Oct. 9, 2006.

What a lie!

by Martin R. Rodriguez

All Rigths Reserved

What a lie! Twist your tongue!,

Open your mouth to declare,

This state has a marvelous labor law!,

This is a great right to work state. Oh Yeah!

What a lie! Twist your tongue!,

take their job,once again,without care,

it doesn't matter! fire them all!,

No concern! Cause dispair!

What a lie! Twist your tongue!,

Put your knife in their throat! who will care?,

Fire them all! none will ask: Is it fair?

This is a great right to fire state. Oh Yeah!

Dictionary definition at the moment. Does it stand a chance of being expanded.. the current content could be in-lined into homemaker which is the only place that links to it? Or is the term more general than a homemaking role? I ask partly because this term doesn't not exist in the UK? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 14:24, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I don't think it has anything to do with homemaking. An 'at-will' employee just doesn't have the right to any sort of 'due-process' before they can be fired (or sacked for you Brits). Once the boss says 'you're fired', that's it, time to clean out your desk.

We have such jobs in Britain... but much more likely to be manual work than a desk job. The phrase we don't have. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 16:47, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

"An 'at-will' employee just doesn't have the right to any sort of 'due-process' before they can be fired" - and likewise for the employee - the employee can quit at any time, for any reason (though like the article says, this is overwhelmingly to the benefit of the employer). Let's face it - our labor is a commodity just like everything else businesses purchase to produce their products. :) If they want to stop purchasing from a particular supplier, that's their prerogative. --Cheese Sandwich 19:58, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Labor is not a commodity. First of all, it's not tangible, it's a service, which by many definitions would exclude it. Anyway, in the USA at least it's legally not a commodity. It's a little disheartening every time someone calls it a commodity. There is a significant difference between money in compensation and money derived through commerce. The most obvious being that workers do not incorporate themselves as businesses :-|

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode15/usc_sec_15_00000017----000-.html

Labor is indeed considered an expendable commodity in much of the United States. The majority of states follow at-will employment, and even if discrimination has taken place, it is very difficult to prove, as lawyers in hardline at-will states are often reluctant to take on these cases. This is not likely to change anytime soon, with the decline of organized labor and the ascendancy of pro-management Republican policies since the 1980s.--MarshallStack 05:18, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I changed the heading on the common law exceptions to eliminate the phrase about "swallowing the rule." I would argue that the common law exceptions are nowhere near the point of "swallowing the rule" in the United States. The vast majority of employment situations may be described by the general rule of employment at will (employer may discharge the employee "for good cause, for no cause, or even for bad cause"), subject to the very limited case law exceptions and of course the statutory exceptions as explained in the article. Famspear 19:44, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I concur. I have no idea which state that contributor must have been from, but it must be a small, weird outlier state (like Alabama or Maine). At-will is still the overwhelmingly dominant rule in most states. --Coolcaesar 23:44, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

We might want to do a cross-reference with Just Cause to see what union contracts include to negotiate at-will. --Chrispounds 02:34, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Merge

I suggest a speedy merger. —Markles 01:01, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

At will employment.....all employment is at will. There are ways to fire anyone regardless of any law that could be created. Any job worth the cost of fighting for already has a legal team who could keep litagation going much longer than any common person has money to contest it in court. Less taxpayer money should be spent, in this country, for issues like this. As far as screaming minority..... good luck ..... First you would have to cure all the components associated with fraud, lies, and dirty dealing. Any headway made to "right the wrongs" would be constantly knocked back to "beginning steps" by any number of people along the way. Besides who would be running the government then? Considering all the steps necessary to change any misjustice, we will still be screaming minority and misjustice in another 100 years. In answer to merging the topics....it would make the information easier to find for people on both sides of the equation. Cracks like the one about Alabama would help keep responces shorter. My SOAP BOX answer was necessitated by that glib comment. Radiologyinstructor 00:46, 30 November 2006 (UTC)Drenda Benn

---

Your wrong, dude. Several people in the US have successfully sued former employers for illegal firing. While being fired for being a protected class is difficult to prove, it can be done, and it has been done. When it is proven, plaintiffs can collect millions - yes, millions, of dollars in punitive damages. Besides, if you do it right, it costs you absolutely nothing to sue a company if you loose. How, you ask? It's called contingency-based attorneys. Cotingency-based attorneys operate on a "no recovery, no fee" basis, so if you loose, and thus get no recovery, you don't owe the lawyer a dime.

Please do your research before you come here and start running your big, fat, annoying, cocky, arrogant mouth. Pretty please! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dstebbin (talk • contribs) 02:39, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Modern definition of "at will" differs greatly from the wild west fantasies that some people have. That's why companies have HR - if you're not a member of HR, it's very likely that you will botch the firing process of someone and end up breaking half a dozen laws in the process. By the same token, a person that is not a police officer will likely break some laws if he is trying to make an arrest. Those who say that "technically", a boss can fire you for things like not liking the color of your shirt, preferring Coke to Pepsi, etc...if he tries to file any paperwork for termination on those grounds, he'd get laughed out by his peers, bosses, and HR shortly. Can you imagine if the employee goes to the media, and mentions that he was fired for something frivolous like that? The company would instantly lose money, they'd pay hundreds of thousands so the case would not go to court. rock8591 04:41, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Retaliatory discharge exception

I removed the following statement:

"All U.S. states recognize retaliatory discharge as an exception to the at-will rule."

Since I could find no basis for it. IANAL, but the reference that I found specifically refuted retaliation as a cause of action unless it violated public policy or some statute. Feel free to re-add with citation. --b4hand 16:12, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

-No, you're 100% correct. An employer can fire you as punishment for anything that is not against public policy, such as turning in the company for a crime. And when I say "anything," I mean anything, as in they could fire you for, say, criticising one of their favorite politicians (freedom of speech does not extend to the private sector). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dstebbin (talk • contribs) 02:29, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

That's a damn lie, Dstebbins. Retaliating against a wrongful termination lawsuit is illegal; it's just a federal law, rather than a state law in every state. I'll re-add it with citation from the website of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission itself, so bite me.Wikieditor1988 (talk) 05:55, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

It also means you can quit your job if your boss criticizes your favorite politician. At-will employment works both ways. Hanxu9 (talk) 13:15, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Citing the Wagner Act

I put in the Wagner Act of 1935, and just because I know somebody has never heard of it and will want citation, I put it in there automatically. It was based on an academic journal called Managerial Law, but apparently, I got the HTML wrong, even though I copied and pasted the formula from the cite journal template. If someone could correct the HTML, I'd appreciate it.

This page is good! - and a question

I have to say I'm very impressed with this little page. And looking at the history it seems a really good example of a gradual build up, with a few different contributors. I wanted to ask, in the UK we have the requirement to give reasonable notice before a dismissal under s.86 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, or payment in lieu of notice. Everyone has a minimum of 1 week after 1 month, 2 weeks after 2 years, 3 weeks after 3 years, and so on till you get to 12. Anyone who is an "employee" is covered. And of course the contract itself can offer greater notice period. Am I right, this does not exist in the US (excluding the WARN Act)? Wikidea 09:53, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

At-will employment is what it sounds like it is. It's like that show The Apprentice (U.S. TV series) where Donald Trump says "You're fired!" and the contestant has to leave the premises RIGHT AWAY. Except for people who have executed personal service contracts (a relatively small number of elite executives, athletes, entertainers, etc.), most people are under at-will.

However, because of all the exceptions noted in this article, employers in most states are careful about firing people willy-nilly because of the high risk of getting hit with wrongful termination lawsuits. Usually most rational employers will quietly develop a paper record of an employee's misconduct or incompetence and try to provide constructive feedback several times. Then when they have developed a sufficient record demonstrating "good cause" (as a defense against wrongful termination) they will pick a suitable day and fire the employee. At that very moment, an employee can demand immediate payment of any pending wages, but then must clean out any personal belongings out of their workspace, return any of the employer's property like keys, and depart the premises immediately. --Coolcaesar (talk) 11:58, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Haha, yes I know Trump - and there's even a version of the Apprentice in the UK. It's interesting how you put it though, because this "good cause" firing idea is something we do not have. Let's say there is nothing about dismissal in the contract. You can fire somebody for any economic reason - in other words it can be as little as "we don't want to pay you any more". But you cannot fire somebody on discriminatory grounds, you have to give reasonable notice (the idea of this is to keep some responsibility for unemployment on the employer, and some burden off the state for paying benefits) and in some cases you have to pay redundancy. If there was a real instance of incompetence then of course that's a good reason to sack someone, because of course, they will have breached the terms of their contract to do a job.

What you say is interesting because here an employer would not need to go into whether the employee was a good or bad person. It seems to me a bit perverse that employers would compile instances of incompetence in order to be able sack down the line, when that might just be constructing an excuse to get rid of someone for perfectly legitimate business reasons. Why shouldn't the law just allow people to say, "sorry we can't afford to pay you anymore"? What do you think? Wikidea 18:28, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Public Policy?

I thought the section on "public policy exceptions" was singularly unhelpful. Isn't that just saying, "these states have a rule that, if they make a rule, the rule will apply"?

What kind of public policies give rise to an exception? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.66.232.195 (talk) 08:57, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Depends on the state and on the judges. --Coolcaesar (talk) 16:05, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

copy vio

the section I marked as a copy vio is a clear copy paste it is word for word punctuation for punctuation the same as the source.--209.181.16.93 (talk) 18:14, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

The div isnt working its only that part of the section no matter what i do it blocks the rest it worked well before but i dont wanna revert it and ruin the rest of the edit by the latest reverter--209.181.16.93 (talk) 18:19, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Can you please change the text then? It sort of wrecks the whole article with that enormous and silly tag! Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anybody can edit. Wikidea 09:28, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Copyright info directly from the BLS website:

Copyrights and BLS Publications

* The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is a Federal government agency and everything that we publish, both in hard copy and electronically, is in the public domain, except for previously copyrighted photographs and illustrations. You are free to use our public domain material without specific permission, although we do ask that you cite the Bureau of Labor Statistics as the source. * The public domain use of our materials includes linking to our website. You do not need to obtain special permission from the BLS to link to our site.

I removed the tag.Pjbflynn (talk) 14:35, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Quite right; not a copyright problem. :) However, in accordance with Wikipedia:Plagiarism, I have provided at least minimal necessary attribution. I did not leave an inline note as well, as I'm unsure if there is other material taken from that pdf. Back to the copyright problems board to note this one resolved. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:52, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Exception Section Graphics

A request for a (hopefully) simple fix: The red-state/blue-state graphics detailing which exceptions exist in which states are not clearly labeled as to which color represents the exceptions and which the norm.

I can infer that the blue states are probably the exception states from the fact that they tend to be in the minority, but I don't know this for a certainty. Could someone who does know please adjust the graphics or captions to make this information explicit? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nicholsonadam (talk • contribs) 15:18, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Removed passage on entrepreneurship

This passage that I added:

"Contrary to this, however, is recent research which shows that "[b]y every measure of small-business employment, the United States has among the world’s smallest small-business sectors (as a proportion of total national employment)." This suggests a much less clear link between at-will employment and entrepreneurship."

should not have been removed. The reason given was "[It] DOES NOT DISCUSS EFFECTS OF AT-WILL EMPLOYMENT." However, the passage is directly related to the claim that at-will employment "is widely credited as one of the major factors behind the strength of the U.S. economy." Small business employment is often used as a proxy for entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship is being held up as a direct result of at-will employment ("at-will employment has been credited with making possible the success of Silicon Valley as an entrepreneur-friendly environment"). So it certainly discusses the effects of at-will employment - it questions whether it is having the supposed effect that this article states. Even if it did not, however, many other parts of this article do not discuss the effects of at-will employment and nor should they if that is not the aspect of at-will employment they are discussing (like its origins).

I kindly request that it be re-added.

Kriswarner (talk) 21:25, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like you're unfamiliar with Wikipedia's strict "No original research" policy. The inference you draw is NOT in the source cited. Even if you had a source for the proposition that "small business employment is often used as a proxy for entrepreneurship," the (very flimsy) combination of THAT proposition with the one from the Schmitt and Lane paper is original research in and of itself which violates WP:NOR. If you can convince a proper academic publication to publish your (incredibly wrong) position, then you can add a cite to that to Wikipedia. Plus, based on the fact you're defending such a weak position, it sounds like you've never worked in the real world, let alone Silicon Valley. --Coolcaesar (talk) 08:18, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Coolcaesar, I would like to remind you that Civility is part of the Wikipedia Code of Conduct and one of its five pillars. Thank you! Maloot (talk) 09:28, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Removed POV notice

Examining this talk page, I am unable to locate any current discussion of the reasons for the February 2012 POV notice placed in the intro. If there is a remaining concern over POV issues, please add a discussion of them here before simply placing the template on the article. Otherwise, it is every reader/editor's wild guess about what issue is perceived to exist, and no path exists to remedy the unknown POV concern. Memories of lost time (talk) 18:07, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Readding POV notice

The article does clearly contain bias - stating that "employers are reluctant to hire employees if they become uncertain about their ability to immediately fire them" because of a paper by The Cato Institute, a libertarian thinktank, is not NPOV. Maloot (talk) 21:49, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Dear Maloot: You're missing the point. The point is not whether there is bias in the article, but rather whether there is any current discussion about that. The purpose of the template is to show that there is an ongoing discussion, not to show that there is bias.

By the way, I did make some modifications to the passage that you referenced, because there did seem to be a bit of a neutrality problem with the way the material was stated. However, the fact that one of the sources cited is the Cato Institute, "a libertarian thinktank," is really tangential. In Wikipedia, the sources are allowed to be biased. The Wikipedia policy on Neutral Point of View (NPOV) refers to the way material is presented in the article, not to whether the material itself comes from a biased source. NPOV generally means presenting opposing viewpoints (yes, even opposing viewpoints from biased sources) in a way such that Wikipedia itself does not take sides.

If sources were not allowed to be biased, for example, you couldn't have an article on politics that cited both liberal and conservative sources, since -- by definition -- anyone who espouses a liberal view is biased in favor of the liberal view and anyone who espouses a conservative view is biased in favor of the conservative view. Famspear (talk) 23:11, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

By all means, contextualise this discussion as you wish. Of course sources can be biased, but I still think there is a neutrality problem here - I have made a minor edit for now, as a bit more searching around, and perhaps discussion, will be required before proper balance can be rendered. Maloot (talk) 01:24, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

"Proper balance"? What are you talking about? The finding noted by the Cato Institute book (which was merely restating the results of a 1992 RAND empirical study) is widely accepted among educated intellectuals and businesspersons across the political spectrum as a matter of common sense, and it is a neutral statement to simply state that proposition. The only real debate is over where to balance efforts to mitigate the harsh effects of summary termination of employment upon individual employees against the risk (or, in other words, opportunity cost) of reducing aggregate employment.

The U.S. economy is so strong because (with the relatively new exception of WARN Act mass layoff situations) every employee who is not a controlling shareholder of their own employer (including everyone from the chief executive officer to the janitor) goes to work knowing that today is the day they could be fired. And unless the employer has expressly promised severance benefits, the only thing they are entitled to on the way out is their last paycheck. --Coolcaesar (talk) 02:12, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't accept any of that really unless you've got a lot more to back it up, though I thank you for it as it's quite revealing. Educated intellectuals? As opposed to uneducated ones? Hmmmmmmmm. As the article is specifically about a doctrine of US law, clearly the article needs to centre around debate within the USA. Wikipedia is not America though, and there's a way to capture all of this in a more NPOV manner. "What is NPOV" states that "In a neutral representation, the differing points of view are presented as differing points of view, not as widely accepted facts" - yet your words above indicate an unwillingness to align with that. As a lawyer in North America, I can see how you are in a strong position to contribute to this article, but I would ask you to please accept that this is also a good reason why you shouldn't 'own' the article and thus should instead gracefully work with others who can help make the piece more neutral in tone. See 'Writing for the Opponent' - "Also, people can honestly fail to see the bias inherent in a popular term or point of view, simply because it's the one commonly used or familiar to them. But English Wikipedia is a highly diverse and international project, and its editors reflect many different points of view. Maintaining objectivity about the most personal or contentious subjects is new to most people, and many disputes over the terminology and phrasing can be resolved by simply balancing points of view (in proportion to their significance, of course)." Anglo-American focus is explicitly stated as contrary to NPOV. This article doesn't need a massive rewrite, it just needs a little recontextualisation - I suggest that we don't need to work against eachother here. Thank you

I am going to insert the POV tag whilst we discuss this - to be clear, I am stating that the tone and emphasis of the opening paragraphs are not NPOV. I think, long-term, I would suggest that this article can and should be opened-up to include international viewpoints (there was, about a year ago, policy discussions within government of having at-will employment in the UK), whilst still acknowledging that roots and history of the idea. Let's collaborate! Maloot (talk) 09:24, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

But again, on what specific grounds do you disagree with the basic underlying tenets of at-will? It sounds like you are completely unfamiliar with the huge body of relevant literature both for and against at-will (mostly for, since most economists regard it as promoting economic efficiency). I strongly recommend familiarizing yourself with the literature rather than attempting to claim POV from a position of ignorance, although I suppose part of the problem is that most of the literature is in the U.S. since we have both the world's finest economists (60% of the Nobel laureates in economics are based in the U.S.) and the world's finest libraries (the reason why OCLC was founded in the U.S. and couldn't have been founded anywhere else). In any case, I've added a more nuanced treatment to the article based on an excellent survey paper by J.H. Verkerke. --Coolcaesar (talk) 16:18, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Removing paragraph

I have been puzzling over the following paragraph and its relevance to at-will employment:

As a means of downsizing, such as closing an unprofitable factory, a company may terminate employees en masse. However, there are legal limitations upon the employer's ability to terminate without reason.

At-will employment, as explained in this very article, by definition allows the employer to terminate without reason. As the doctrine is applied in America, limitations on the right to terminate are exceptions to the at-will doctrine, and limit the employer's ability to terminate for "bad" reasons, not without reason. While the first sentence is undoubtedly true, closing an unprofitable factory for business-economic reasons--resulting in mass layoffs--is good cause even in (non-American) jurisdictions with strict worker protections and provided for under union contracts (which might impose severance benefits unavailable to at-will employees). As such, this makes no sense in context.

Going back over the page's history, this phrasing started out backwards. The second half was added by SimonP in March 2005 as part of a largely-reworked, and at the time uncited, explanation of at-will employment and exceptions:

Although at-will employment allows an employee to quit for no reason, it is most often invoked when an employer wants to fire an employee at any time, but there are limitations upon the employer's ability to terminate without reason.

Followed by this addition by Toytoy in April 2005:

Many of these jobs are entry-level ones. As a means of downsizing, say closing an unprofitable factory, a company may fire employees en masse.

On 13 Sept 2009, an anon {{fact}}-tagged this, and then Aboutmovies added the citation without explanation, discussion, or an excerpt to explain why this citation supports its premise, or how the premise relates to the subject or context of the article.

In Wikipedian fashion over the past seven years, these fragments escaped their context, reversed order, and no longer support the article, so I am removing it. NTK (talk) 03:44, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Wow---that's a lot of work for what seems to be a relatively minor issue, but I fully concur with your well-thought analysis and with the deletion as executed. --Coolcaesar (talk) 14:57, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Concur with research plaudits.

Shouldn't we say that while a company may close a factory, thereby terminating all workers, it must give x months notice? This does limit the company's "at will" employment to a great degree for companies of a "certain" size, with which I am not familiar. This may have been the original intent of the editors, but somehow got lost in the process. Student7 (talk) 00:50, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Removal of pov wording

A sentence read "On the one hand, the doctrine of at-will employment has been criticized for its harshness upon employees.Clyde W. Summers, Employment At Will in the United States: The Divine Right of Employers, 3 U. Pa. J. Lab. & Emp. L. 65 (2000)." Emphasis mine. I replaced the pov word "harshness," which may be from a rs. Nevertheless, it is overstatement at best. Tens of millions of workers spend a lifetime with an "at will" employment, not only in the US, but other countries, with no indication of "harshness." This is a pov selection of words by an author, whose intent is to trigger a reaction in the reader, and not to present facts in an objective manner. It is media-oriented. Student7 (talk) 15:10, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

And I countermanded and strengthened that sentence because because the wording accurately reflects the cited article by Clyde Summers, the leading labor law scholar of his generation. (Google his name and notice all the obituaries in the top U.S. newspapers.)

Look, I fully support the at-will regime (see my comments elsewhere on this page) as the most economically efficient employment relationship, but it is important to treat it honestly and with eyes wide open to the full cost-benefit analysis. That is, under at-will, employers enjoy the latitude to mistreat employees to a degree many other countries find to be barbaric and unjust; Summers's article only scratches the surface of what is in the reported cases. (There are many other articles out there that summarize some really awful things done by employers under at-will.). We tolerate that only because it keeps U.S. employees productive, as opposed to the laziness and incompetence that is now prevalent in countries where employees have real rights. --Coolcaesar (talk) 15:29, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Removal of March 2013 NPOV notice

Is there any objection to me removing the NPOV notice posted in March? There hasn't been any discussion on the NPOV of this article since mid-March, more than two months ago. It would seem that there have also been edits since then that addressed the NPOV issues raised.

If someone wants to begin a new discussion about any NPOV issues with this article, then there's no reason to remove the template, but with no discussion for over two months and most of the issues seemingly having been addressed, I see no reason to leave the notice up.

I'll wait a bit before I remove the notice to give anyone who wants to begin a discussion regarding the NPOV of this article a chance to do so. --Schaea (talk) 21:57, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

I concur with the removal of that notice. --Coolcaesar (talk) 03:23, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Just by chance, I happened to look at this page today, as a reader and non-expert, but it's not on my watchlist. If I understand correctly, the issue is whether the page should acknowledge the downsides of the doctrine from the employees' point of view. In my experience as an employee, I'd say that WP:NPOV means, here, that it's appropriate to include that perspective, rather than to remove it from the page. The current version of the page does not appear to me to be overly critical of the doctrine. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:06, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Y Banner Removed. Took me a bit longer to remove it than planned, but alas, it has finally been removed. --Schaea (talk) 07:41, 11 July 2013 (UTC)