Employment-At-Will Doctrine
Sheryl A. Ayeni
Prof. James Laurie
Law, Ethics, and Corporate Governance
November 13, 2014

Employment-At-Will Doctrine
Employment at will is a legal rule that was created in the nineteenth century, giving employers the will to terminate any employee at any time for any reason (Halbert & Ingulli, 2012). In the absence of a contractual agreement between an employer and an employee establishing a definite term of employment, the relationship is presumed to be terminable at the will of either party. Over the years there have been many adjustments and exceptions to this law (Halbert & Ingulli, 2012). Federal and state statutes have created exceptions prohibiting employers from discharging employees based on impermissible considerations such as the employee’s age, race, sex, religion, national origin, or disability, or in retaliation for filing certain claims against the employer (Halbert & Ingulli, 2012).
Scenario #1 – Ellen started a blog to protest the CEO’s bonus, noting that no one below the director has gotten a raise in two (2) years and portraying her bosses as “know-nothings” and “out-of-touch”. The National Labor Relations Board has issued reports, the first in August 2001 and the second in January 2012, in regards to whether or not an employee can be disciplined for social media messages. In these reports they list various situations where employee utilized Facebook as a forum to voice their opinions about their employer (NLRB, n.d.). As a summary, if the employees were engaged in protected concerted activity, meaning they were discussing everything with fellow employees who were also providing feedback, therefore the employee cannot be fired (NLRB, n.d.). In this case, I do not have enough information to say whether or not Ellen can be fired because I do not know if these comments were made in relation to