So many of the employees who reach out to me about potential legal claims are caught off guard by the fundamental realities of at-will employment. I am 100% certain I have said the following phrase at least five times a day for the last eleven years: “Here in South Carolina, you are employed at-will, meaning you can be fired for good reason, bad reason, or no reason at all.” [Read more: At-Will Employment vs. Right to Work for South Carolina Employees]
This statement hits many employees pretty hard for the first time. “You mean all the stuff I’ve just described to you is OKAY?” is one of the most common responses I hear.
“That’s not what I said,” I reply. “What you’ve described sounds pretty awful, and it’s certainly not okay. But that doesn’t necessarily make it ILLEGAL. I can’t help with a bad workplace or bad managers or stupid corporate decisions. I can only help when the company’s actions violate the law in some way, which would fall into the exceptions for at-will employment.”
What are the Exceptions to At-Will Employment?
As I go on to explain, you can be fired for any reason…EXCEPT for an illegal reason. You can’t be fired or treated negatively based on your age, race, sex, national origin, religion, or disability. You can’t be fired in retaliation for engaging in protected conduct, like reporting illegal harassment or discrimination, reporting unsafe working conditions, or taking protected medical or military leave. Read more: What is a Protected Complaint for SC Employees?] You can’t be fired for filing complaints with state agencies about unpaid wages or complaints with federal agencies about unpaid overtime or minimum wage.
These, as I explain to the potential client, are exceptions to the at-will standard. If the company took negative actions against you, including termination, based on one of those exceptions, then that’s something I CAN help you with. At that point, you may have a claim for unlawful retaliation. Retaliation claims are concerned with whether the employee’s complaint resulted in an adverse employment action by the company BECAUSE of the complaint.
What is the Purpose of Anti-Discrimination Laws?
The workplace discrimination laws aren’t meant to create a perfect workplace. You will always have bullies, ineffective managers, lazy coworkers or bosses, bad communication, or unexpected layoffs. Rather, the goal of the antidiscrimination laws are to create a space where employees can compete and perform based solely on merit and not based on the color of their skin, their sex, their religious beliefs, or where they came from. All of us have experienced indignities in the workplace. I worked five years in the fast food industry while in high school and college, and I saw and dealt with all kinds of crazy things (some of which might have a made for a decent employment claim). So I get it.
But when it comes time for me to evaluate a case, I have to spend my time weeding through the troubling behavior to find the truly illegal. This is not to diminish the person’s feelings or what they went through. I try my best to show empathy and compassion to everyone I talk to. But it’s my job to help where I can, explain where I can’t help, and hopefully provide some measure of guidance along the way.
If you have experienced workplace harassment or retaliation, please feel free to reach out to office to provide additional information about your case. You can call our office at 864-233-4351 or via our Contact Us page.
