Emerging Protection Against Retaliatory Discharge: A Public Policy Exception to the Employment At-Will Doctrine in Maine

The job security of approximately sixty percent of Maine's civilian labor force has traditionally been, and continues to be, governed by the employment at-will doctrine. In its traditional form, the doctrine allows employers to discharge employees, whose employment contract is for an indefinite length, for good cause, no cause, or bad cause. Similarly, the employee is free to terminate the employment relationship at any time. Courts and commentators have pointed out that the symmetry and logical appeal of the contractual principle of mutuality of obligation is the central doctrinal underpinning of the rule. Because the employment at-will doctrine was consistent with the developing idea of freedom of contact and the laissez-faire views that dominated American political and economic thought in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the rule gained wide acceptance in this country during this period, achieving federal constitutional status in Adair v. United States. In the last two decades, however, courts and commentators have recognized that, because the mutuality of obligations rationale is based on the false premise of relatively equal bargaining power between employees at-will and employers, the traditional employment at-will doctrine has little or no legitimate economic justification. Moreover, changed social values, crystallized most clearly in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), have significantly eroded the policy bases of the doctrine. Based primarily on the recognition that the traditional doctrine unjustly threatens the employment security of employees at-will by giving the employer the right to discharge them arbitrarily, courts around the country have limited the employer's power to discharge employees at-will by creating various exceptions to the traditional rule.