Good faith in employment
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Sabine Tsuruda
Abstract
This Article argues that the duty of good faith in contractual performance offers powerful but neglected resources to empower workers to pursue their legitimate interests and resist mistreatment by employers. The duty of good faith creates a joint authority structure within contractual relationships, vesting co-contractors with equal and joint authority over the meaning, purposes, and, hence, the requirements of their contract. Implementing such an authority structure requires ensuring that the parties to a contract have the communicative space and epistemic resources they need to uncover and develop a common understanding of their contract. In the context of employment, such an authority structure would be transformative. It would require legal recognition of a variety of employee speech rights and protection from termination for reasonable and good faith refusals to perform work, and would offer a legal basis to challenge the scope and enforceability of at-will employment clauses. The duty of good faith could thus supply a common law foundation for rights and obligations commonly associated with labor law.
© 2023 by Theoretical Inquiries in Law
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Private Law Theory Meets the Law of Work
- Introduction
- Nondomination and the ambitions of employment law
- Relational and associational justice in work
- Can contract emancipate? contract theory and the law of work
- The work of tort law: Why nonconsensual access to the workplace matters?
- The classical liberal version of labor law: Beware of coercion dressed up as liberty
- Is labor law internal or external to private law? The view from Cedar point
- The history of job (in)security: Why private law theory may not save work law
- Managerial prerogative, property rights, and labor control in employment status disputes
- Good faith in employment
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Private Law Theory Meets the Law of Work
- Introduction
- Nondomination and the ambitions of employment law
- Relational and associational justice in work
- Can contract emancipate? contract theory and the law of work
- The work of tort law: Why nonconsensual access to the workplace matters?
- The classical liberal version of labor law: Beware of coercion dressed up as liberty
- Is labor law internal or external to private law? The view from Cedar point
- The history of job (in)security: Why private law theory may not save work law
- Managerial prerogative, property rights, and labor control in employment status disputes
- Good faith in employment
