What is Employment At Will?
Texas employment law attorney Chris McKinney discusses employment at will and wrongful termination in today's video.
Today’s Topic: What is employment at will and how will it affect my wrongful termination claim?
Transcript:
- What is employment at will and how will it affect my wrongful termination claim? Hi everyone, I'm Chris McKinney, Texas employment rights attorney. And today we're going to talk a little bit about the concept of employment at will and how that interplays with the idea of being wrongfully terminated from your job. So what his employment at will? Well, very simply employment at will is the legal concept that's held to in almost every state in the United States, which says that an employer can fire an employee for any reason, no reason, or even a bad reason, even an unfair reason. And likewise, an employee generally can quit a job for any reason, no reason, or a bad reason. So what does that mean if you've been wrongfully terminated or you feel you've been unfairly fired? Well, in fact, we get calls like this all the time from people that have frankly, terrible bosses and have been fired for demonstrably, unfair terrible reasons, but they're not illegal reasons. And therefore there's nothing that the law can do to prevent an employer from terminating an employee for that reason. So what types of reasons are illegal? Well, those are generally, things that have been set up by statute, by our state and our federal legislatures. So in general, an employer under the idea of employment at will, can fire an employee for any reason that it wants, unless the reason that the employer is using has been statutorily prohibited by law. So some easy examples of those are anti-discrimination statutes. An employer is not allowed to terminate an employee for discriminatory reasons, such as those based on race or sex or age or pregnancy or disability or religion. Likewise, an employer would not be allowed to terminate an employee in retaliation for having made a report of discrimination for one of those reasons. And there are other reasons, too. There are certain types of what we call whistleblower statutes. And if an employee has made a report of certain types of illegal conduct then those terminations would be illegal as well. So if you've dealt with a termination that you think might've been wrongful, what do you need to do about it? We'll put very simply you do need to speak with a qualified employment lawyer as quickly as possible. And this isn't any joke, unfortunately, the statutes of limitations, the period of time that an employee has to seek legal redress for an illegal termination can be shockingly short, sometimes short as 60 days from the time of the termination until a claim needs to be filed either with an administrative agency or with a court. And if the employee hasn't filed by that time then the claim can be lost forever. Now, not all statutes are that short, but many of them are shorter than you think, some are 60 days, some 180 days, some 300 days. But the bottom line is, if you truly believe that you have a legally actionable wrongful termination case it's not something to wait on. You should find a qualified employment lawyer near you and have a consultation and speak with them as soon as possible. If you have any more questions about wrongful termination or if you want to do some additional legal research on employment laws, visit my website at, themckinneylawfirm.com. Thanks, we'll see you next time.
