Employment and Labor Laws Essay Example

Introduction

Employment and labor laws are majorly enacted to ensure employees are given a fair treatment, employees are safe and to protect the interest of the employers. The laws are derived from opinions of the court, legislation administrative rules, state and federal constitutions. In addition, other employment relationship may be governed by contract. In most cases, employment law is concerned with contracts of employment where a worker is not bound by a collective bargaining agreement and does not belong to any union. On the other hand, labor law applies to environments whereby a worker is a member of a union and is bound by the collective bargaining agreement.

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The need for job protection

Out of ninety million persons employed in nonagricultural private sector occupations, sixty million of the jobs were vulnerable to the employment-at-will in 1992. At the present one, fifty million are sacked by their employer; out of these one fifty million, it is estimated that roughly 7.5% are wrongfully sacked annually by the employer (Sprang, 1994). A wrongful discharge is a termination that is unjustified by some unbiased business explanation that would meet the "just cause" standard. Therefore, the answer to this problem is based on the development of a common law that offers non-union private workers protection given to public employees by legislatures and courts. For instance, grievance procedure before termination offered to public employees.

How employment law work to provide employees with protections against discharge

Employment law is divided into four categories, for instance, benefits and pay law and law of wrongful discharge. Wrongful discharge is a case whereby an employer has terminated the employment contract of an employee. Wrongful termination comprises discrimination because of race, age, sex, religion, retaliation especially when an employee is fired because of filing a claim against discrimination.

In almost every country, employment laws assume that employment affair is at free will. This means that employees and employers are at will to end their contract for any given reason at any given time. This assumption can be conquered by indicating that both the employee and the employer entered into the contract of employment. On the other hand, this presumption may be disregarded by the courts especially when numerous exceptions apply. The employment and labor laws work together to make sure that employees are not sacked based on unbiased reasons. Similarly, a worker cannot be sacked in revenge for whistleblowing or for reporting a claim for compensation. In other countries, labor and employment laws work together to ensure that employees are not sacked by bad faith that is; to avoid paying benefits or bonus.

Employment laws require that before an employee is discharged, Skelly type Pretermination grievance procedure should be followed. The procedure involves investigation, notice of indiscipline, opportunity to respond and finally an appeal to the employers' decision

Changing NLRA to increase the ability of unions to increase the ability of unions to organize employees

In 1935, the National Labor Relations Act was enacted to limit some private sector management and labor practices that might damage the wellbeing of the U.S economy, workers and business. The NLRA was also enacted to support the collective bargaining agreement and to protect the rights of employers and employees ("Employer/Union Rights and Obligations | NLRB | Public Website", 2018). In order to increase the ability of unions to organize employees and influence employers to enter into collective bargaining agreements, national labor relation act should be changed to cover those working in the railway, airline industries and those working for the government. Since the act does not include employees of Government Corporation, state subdivision or any Federal Reserve Bank, farm and domestic workers ("45 U.S. Code 152 - General duties", 2018). Additionally, NLRA can be changed to cater for employers who provide work only to agricultural laborers, and those whose main occupation is farming operations for example preparation of goods for delivery.

The NLRA can also be changed to reduce the disparity of bargaining power between employers organized in corporate ownership associations and workers who do not have complete freedom of contract as this worsens frequent business depression and influences the flow of business.