The Model Employment Termination Act (META) provides that most full-time employees may not be discharged without good cause. Workers in every other major industrial democracy in the world now enjoy that right. The act would also relieve employers of the threat of devastating multimillion-dollar jury verdicts under the existing common law system. For both employers and employees, the act would offer cheaper, faster, and less onerous enforcement procedures by substituting arbitration for court suits.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
1. Payne v. Western & A.R.R., 81 Tenn. 507, 519-20 (1884).
2.
Henry H. Perritt, Jr. , Employee Dismissal Law and Practice (New York: John Wiley, 1992).
3.
3. Copies of the model act are obtainable from the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, 676 North St. Clair Street, Suite 1700, Chicago, Illinois 60601. The full text is reprinted in [IERM] 9A Lab. Rel. Rep. (BNA) 540:21.
4.
4. Jack Stieber, “Recent Developments in Employment-at-Will,”Labor Law Journal, 36:557, 558 (1985).
5.
5. National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, 1991-92 Reference Book (Chicago: National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, 1991), pp. 112, 113.
6.
6. The law has become increasingly willing to void contracts when one party has such an economic advantage over another that the latter has no reasonable alternative to agreeing. Similarly, modern courts often view suspiciously form contracts prepared by insurance companies, car dealers, and the like, which do not give the individual consumer an opportunity to negotiate. The terms of these form contracts will invariably be interpreted against the drafter and, in extreme cases, will be invalidated. See, for example, E. Allan Farnsworth, Contracts (Boston: Little Brown, 1990), pp. 272-287, 310-319.
7.
“Convention No. 158 Concerning Termination of Employment at the Initiative of the Employer,” in International Labour Conventions and Recommendations, 1919-1991 (Geneva: International Labour Office, 1992), 2:1266.
8.
idem , “Legislating Just Cause, 1980-92,” this issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
9.
Louis A. Ferman and Jeanne P. Gordus, eds., Mental Health and the Economy (Kalamazoo, MI: W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 1979).
10.
See also U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Special Task Force, Work in America (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1973), pp. 93-110, 188-201.
