Showing papers in "Villanova law review in 1982"

Employee Termination at Will: A Principled Approach

Abstract: . More recent unemployment figures have been increasingly dire. For instance, in September 1981, 10.1% of the civilian labor force over the age of 16 was unemployed. Arenson, On the Frontier of a New Economics, N.Y. Times, Oct. 31, 1982, at Fl, col. 3. 243. J. BEHRMAN, supra note 230, at 31. 244. Id. at 41. Some classical economists have maintained that labor is simply another commodity to be sold in its respective market subject to the laws of supply and demand. N.F. KEISER, supra note 242, at 523. Others, on the other hand, have maintained that the human personalities which make up the labor force cannot be perceived of as impersonal commodities. G. WATKINS, P. DODD, W. McNAUGHTON, P. PRAsow, THE MANAGEMENT OF PERSONNEL AND LABOR RELATIONS 85-86 (1950) [hereinafter cited as WATKINS & DODD]. For further discussion of the Watkins and Dodd approach, see note 245 infra. While an employee's attitude towards his work is, of course, highly subjective, the Department of Commerce has attempted to quantify these attitudes in statistics. It recently reported a study on commitment to work by the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago that was conducted in 1973-74 and 1976-77. The sample size of the 1973-74 study was 1,558 with 820 responding, while the sample size of the 1976-77 study was 1,514 with 842 responding. The participants in this study were asked whether they would continue to work if they had enough money to live on comfortably for the rest of their lives. In the 1973-74 study, 67% responded that they would continue working, while 33% would stop working. In the 1976-77 study, 69.6% would continue working, while 30.4% would stop working. BUREAU OF THE CENSUS, U.S. DEP'T OF COMMERCE, SOCIAL INDICATORS III, Commitment to Work 348, table 7/1 (1980) [hereinafter cited as SOCIAL INDICATORS III] (citing NATIONAL OPINION RESEARCH CENTER, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, NATIONAL DATA PROGRAM OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES, GENERAL SOCIAL SURVEYS, 1972-78: CUMULATIVE CODEBOOK (1978)). 245. J. BEHRMAN, supra note 230, at 32-33. The Department of Commerce reported that a dramatic decline in job satisfaction occurred between 1973-77 despite the continuing strong commitment to work. See SOCIAL INDICATORS III, supra note 244, at 306. See also WATKINS & DODD, supra note 244. These commentators have stressed that labor cannot be viewed as a commodity: Labor resembles a commodity in that, like other objects of exchange, it commands a price on the market. The quality of exchangeability, however, does not reduce human beings to the level of impersonal things. The energy and skill which are sold by the laborer are inseparable from his life and personality; these are essentially a part of himself . . . . [The laborer's] own immediate welfare, the 1982-83] 39 Peirce et al.: Employee Termination at Will: A Principled Approach Published by Villanova University School of Law Digital Repository, 1982 VILLANOVA LAW REVIEW are entitled to a "living wage" and a higher quality of work life.246 Labor, therefore, is part of an economic system which, because of faulty assumptions, provides little mobility or freedom of choice. The lack of freedom is a result of, and exacerbated by unemployment, inequitable distribution of wealth 247 and an unacceptable, dehumanized view of labor as a factor of production. Consequently, it is specious to justify the at will employment rule on the basis of freedom of the worker.