Usher in a new day for labor: The courts can’t be counted on to protect workers anymore; Congress needs to pass new laws
As the Supreme Court prepares to decide whether the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects gay and transgender people from workplace discrimination, it seems, at least to me, unlikely that a bench dominated by five very conservative men will protect gay employees. This should be a wake-up call: We cannot count on the courts to protect our rights in the workplace. We need a Congress that will actually pass laws, and high on the list of legislative priorities should be a “just cause” law that would protect every employee from unfair terminations. Common as a legal standard of employment across much of the industrialized world, and here routinely negotiated into union contracts, “just cause” is the principle that no employee can be fired without a legitimate, serious, work-performance reason. Such a legal standard would empower workers to speak out about pay disparities, to combat sexual harassment and to complain about unsafe […]