11/05/2025
Checking Boxes. The Elements of Employment Law – Part I
Why do we care about Employment Law?
The real question behind the title: Why do we care about protecting work? What are we protecting? For better or worse, one of the most important things in a human being’s life. You’ve probably seen the expression circling social media, something along the lines of, “we spend our lives on this giant spinning space rock that’s hurtling through ever-expanding nothingness paying bills.” This take, though satirical, is accurate and expresses that our pursuit of work on this planet is an interesting phenomenon given our reality. But while an entertaining thought exercise, it also highlights the reality that humans work to survive, and when survival needs are met, we work to provide a means to enjoy life, not just for ourselves but for others as well.
Generally, in exchange for our labor we expect payment of wages so we can meet survival needs (food, shelter, medical care, clothing) and procure things and experiences that provide enjoyment usually after survival needs are met. Society generally expects us to get that money by engaging in legal tasks that hopefully add value to society and progress humanity forward. We are engrained with this concept at young ages. It is a value with deep historical and even religious roots. In the Old Testament book of Genesis, for instance, after woman is blamed for Adam’s decision to eat the forbidden fruit, God curses mankind. “You will have to work hard all your life,” to eat. And the work won’t be easy. Weeds and thorns will be put in your way. You must “work hard and sweat” to get what you need in this world to survive. We are expected (cursed?) to work.
We must work to survive, and to help others survive. Food may grow on trees or in the ground, but it costs money to acquire. If you grow it yourself, you still buy the seed. If you are a carnivore, you buy the meat (no offense to any hunters out there – but you are the exception not the rule in today’s world). Need shelter? You buy it.
We tie our health to our jobs. In the United States, healthcare is not considered a human right by current jurisprudence or legislative pronouncement. Access to government-provided (or subsidized) healthcare benefits is limited and can be replaced, modified, or taken away.
Instead, a little over half of the United States population gets access to health insurance through their jobs. Typically, they are good benefits. Our jobs provide access to healthcare by way of insurance and similar employee benefits. And not just for us, but for our families as well. If your job does not provide those benefits, you will buy them, if you can afford them, with the wages you earn on the job.
We tie our reputation and feelings of self-worth to our jobs. There is pride in a job well done. There is pride in a hard task completed. There is pride in obstacles that are overcome. We bask in the glow of compliments and affirmation of skills we exhibit to the world and quests we successfully complete. Furthermore, if we are honest, sometimes we judge others in our community based on the job they hold. How many times in friendly, casual, conversation have you asked someone you just met, “what do you do for a living?” It is considered polite to ask, but what you are really asking the person is, what skills do you possess? How hard do you challenge yourself? What value do you add to society? Are you responsible? Can I trust you? It’s a collective fault I think, but we tend to make judgments about people based on what job they perform.
Moreover, the responses we get to the “what do you do” question are telling. They reveal perhaps the most unfortunate truth of our work experience on this planet. Not everyone answers the question enthusiastically. For a variety of reasons, we don’t all end up in a job that feels fulfilling. Some of us don’t find the thing we can both be passionate about and rely on as a means for survival. Work is accepted not for any joy it brings to our lives, but simply for the collection of money. Nevertheless, our jobs are one of the few suns that our worlds revolve around. Their importance to our lives is inextricably intertwined with the value humans place on things like human relationships, self-worth, and worldview.
Finally, as much as we cherish the notion of “rugged individualism,” humans function most effectively in groups. When we work together, we split the atom, we find cures for diseases that ravage our populations, we build colossal structures that stand for ages. We work to create things and provide services that help other humans live fuller lives, and to find the next advancement that makes life just a little bit better than it was before. We collectively work for the advancement and improvement of humanity.
Having established that jobs are important to us, it should come as no surprise that job separations are emotional experiences. For the human told that services are no longer required, there is an inevitable negative effect on self-esteem. There is anger that comes with being told you aren’t needed anymore, believing that your talents have been overlooked or wasted. There is emotional shock that comes when realizing loyalty has not just been unreciprocated but rejected. There is fear that ultimately sets in. Fear over figuring out how the next round of bills are paid, how many resources can be spent on food, where the rent or mortgage payment materializes, and what happens if a medical emergency arises.
So, it is good that we have legal job protections. Elon Musk’s warnings that robots or Artificial Intelligence will replace most of us notwithstanding, our jobs are currently still a critical part of our society, and losing them can trigger life-changing consequences. But like most human-created concepts, our legal job protections are continuous works in progress. At their core, they are based on a primary American value: the freedom to contract. If you have a job, in exchange for an agreed wage, you provide labor at the direction of and for the benefit of another. That is the contract. Most of these contracts in the country today are not in writing. All but a relative handful of them operate under the first principle that they may be terminated by the parties, at any time. This is commonly referred to as the “at-will” rule. For a variety of reasons (for example - the chaos occurring when a party to the labor contract ends it suddenly, and historical lessons learned from the harmful treatment of certain groups of humans), our legislative leaders and the courts have stepped in and crafted legislation and case rules to create special instances where the contract cannot be ended so suddenly by the employer. What are the rules? Stay tuned.
