Private: Laboratory for Democracy: Montana & Just Cause

Non-unionized American workers generally may see their employment terminated for any reason not expressly forbidden by the National Labor Relations Act and other protections. In other words, unlike most other industrialized countries, the United States operates under an at-will system of employment, permitting employers to fire employees without explanation. There is an exception, however.

The state of Montana has operated under the requirement of just cause for termination of employees. Under a just-cause system, employers bear the burden of proof to justify dismissals of employees, usually by offering evidence of the employee having violated company policy or rules. 

This unique experiment in labor law is the subject of Just Cause in Montana: Did the Big Sky Fall? by labor law exper Barry D. Roseman, and ACS Issue Brief included in the latest edition of Advance: The Journal of the ACS Issue Groups. 

In his brief, Roseman applies the lessons of just cause in Montana to the broader national policy debate. While those defending at-will employment claim that it is necessary to maintaining a low unemployment rate, Roseman observes that, in the only state in the Union to adopt just-cause employment, this is not true.

Montana now has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the United States. Its economy over the last three decades has been driven by factors that have nothing to do with the fact that it has abolished employment at will. 

Roseman concludes that arguments predicting doom-and-gloom as a result of just cause employment prove unwarranted. In Montana, he writes, "the Big Sky did not fall." Rather, Roseman argues, the state is a modern success story, combining protections for workers with basement-level unemployment rates.

It is time-many believe, long past time-for the federal government and the states to enact laws to require just cause for termination of employment. The economy of the United States, the global economy and the state of labor relations are vastly different than they were in the first year of the administration of Rutherford B. Hayes, the year in Horace Wood first announced the doctrine of employment at will. The mere fact that this has become the default rule for the common law of employment does not mean that it is based on sound policy, if that ever was the case.

Labor and Employment Law