The COVID-19 pandemic has brought economic hardships for many industries. However, none have been hit quite as hard as the restaurant industry, including fast-food. In most industrial sectors in the United States, employees are subject to at-will employment contracts, meaning that employees can be terminated without cause. However, this will no longer be the case for fast-food workers in New York City. On January 5, 2021 Mayor Bill de Blasio signed new legislation that effectively ends at-will employment for fast-food restaurant workers in New York City. The law, which goes into effect on July 4, 2021, prevents employers from discharging employees or reducing their hours past a certain threshold unless the employer has “just cause,” which is described as, among other things, unsatisfactorily performing their duty.
At-will employment means that both employee and employer are under no obligation to continue the working relationship, and both parties can end it at any moment. An at-will employee can quit, with no prior notice, and the employer is not entitled to any legal recourse. However, the employer can refuse to rehire the employee and may choose to provide a negative employment reference’. Employers in at-will relationships can also end an employment relationship without notice, but they ’may not do so for an unlawful reason. For example, employees terminated based on race, religion, gender, or another protected category would constitute an illegal termination.
Under New York City’s new law, after a maximum of a 30-day “probationary period,” fast-food restaurants can terminate employees only for “just cause,” defined as ”the fast-food ’employee’s failure to satisfactorily perform job duties or misconduct that is demonstrably and materially harmful to the fast-food employer’s legitimate business interests.” In addition, the law imposes progressive discipline requirements on fast-food employers, subject to limited exceptions for egregious performance or misconduct. Importantly, a termination will “not be considered based on just cause unless … the fast-food employer has utilized progressive discipline.” The term “progressive discipline” is defined as a “disciplinary system that provides for a graduated range of reasonable responses to a fast-food employee’s failure to satisfactorily perform such fast food employee’s job duties, with the disciplinary measures ranging from mild to severe, depending on the frequency and degree of the failure.”
For now, this law only pertains to the fast-food sector of New York City. However, laws such as these tend to spread both across sectors and also geographically. Therefore, this change could be coming to a business or a city near you sooner than you think.
If you have questions about your rights, as an employer or employee, please contact the attorneys at Rock Fusco & Connelly, LLC.