Labor Law & At-Will Employment

This course on labor law will go over the rights and duties of employees, labor unions, and employers in the US labor market. We will be looking at protections provided by the United States Constitution and other legislation that attempts to remedy the “inequality of bargaining power” between employees and employers, especially employers “organized in the corporate or other forms of ownership association”. You will learn that there is no automatic right to an occupational pension beyond federally guaranteed Social Security and how the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 requires employees to have a safe system of work. You will learn how employment contracts, through collective bargaining and union negotiations, employees can always create better terms than statutory minimum rights. You will learn about the labor organizing protections contained in the Clayton Act of 1914 and how it guarantees all people the right to organize, and you will learn about the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which creates rights for most employees to organize without detriment through unfair labor practices. We will also be looking at the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, and how labor union governance is required by law to follow democratic principles. You will also learn that issues such as severance pay are not automatic, and they are typically only available through collective bargaining and union negotiations.

In addition to workers’ rights, we will discuss the rights of employers. At-will hiring and firings have long been the practice in the United States, where an employer can terminate employment for good cause, bad cause, or no cause at all, as long as it’s not a wrongful termination. Finally, we will also be looking at California labor laws, agricultural union organizing, and how recent immigration crackdowns have affected growers’ access to field workers. In 2025, labor has become one of the most controversial issues of the day, and it’s important to understand the significance of politics in the balance of labor law and how labor affects the economy. Thank you, and I hope you find this course enlightening.