I acknowledge by signing this document that I am an at will employee and my relationship with this employer may be terminated at any time or any reason or no reason.
Most workers will automatically assume that this statement is legally binding and that it can be used to fire an employee who attempts to join or organize a union. That assumption is incorrect, as is demonstrated here.
Please note however, employers' rarely give race, age, sex, politics, religion, sexual preference, disability, or union activity as the cause for dismissing a worker or hiring them. Rather they give pretextual reasons for the dismissal of a worker in order to cloak their underlying unlawful purposes -- and the burden rest on the injured employee to prove their case in court. Not always an easy thing to do. So while federal and state and public policy exceptions do exist to "protect" workers from discriminatory discharges as a matter of "law" -- The real world is quite another story in terms of a worker securing relief for an unlawful discharge in an "At Will" employment relationship. This is one reason why workers form unions in the first place. However, the following account offers a legal precedent for (at least partially) challenging "at will" status.
In the case of D'Sa v. Playhut, Inc., Richard D'Sa went to work for toy maker Playhut as an art director. Playhut asked him to sign a non-compete clause, which would have prevented him from working for a competitor for a year and would require him to report any job changes to Playhut for the following five years. D'Sa balked at signing the non-compete clause and Playhut, on advice from its outside human resources consulting firm, Worldtec Group International, fired him thinking it wasn't one of the grounds explicitly prohibited by law.
D'Sa sued and eventually won at the appellate level. The court noted in D'Sa that public policy generally limits the right of an employer to fire an at-will employee. It then noted that in California, public policy strongly discouraged non-compete clauses, since the ability to freely move from job to job is required for a stable job market and, let's face it, working for the same company all one's life is quite rare these days.
The court rejected Playhut's argument that it was trying to protect its trade secrets because other provisions in the employment agreement protected trade secrets, and it appears they made everybody sign it. It also rejected the choice of law provisions (since non-compete agreements are legal in many states), probably under the general principle that public policy will protect California workers regardless of which state's law applies.
However, many firms (even in California), still ask their employees to sign non-compete clauses, even if they aren't the types of employees that possess trade secrets, probably as a psychological deterrent. On the other hand, if an employee does refuse to sign, employers really can't do anything about it.
(This story was appeared in the New York Times, January 31, 2001)
