Imagine working at a job you love for years. The benefits are great, you get enough hours in and you’re friends with many of your coworkers. While some things could be better, you’re happy with where you’re at in your career.
Suddenly, after something trivial like a controversial post on Facebook or being a couple minutes late one morning, it’s gone. You’ve been fired because Idaho is a “work at will” state and you have no protections as an employee.
While it’s important to say that not every company, business or boss is going to act like this, they shouldn’t be given the chance to. In Idaho, they have every chance and no one can do anything about it unless it goes against federal law or a company contract.
With Idaho being a “work at will” state, that means that “there is no set length for an employment relationship and either the employer or the employee may end it at any time, with or without notice; with or without cause,” according to the Idaho Labor Law frequently asked questions website.
On top of not requiring notice or a reason for employee termination, Idaho also does not require vacation, holiday, severance or sick pay to go along with the lack of required rest periods, lunch breaks, holidays off, vacation or any other type of “break.”
Many employers in Idaho do close for federal and religious holidays, but so do most employers in other states. That’s a standard of normal for most businesses. What shouldn’t be normal is the lack of required rest periods during employee shifts.
In a feature story published in The Argonaut on April 6, a Moscow Bagel Shop employee, Maddie Lords, said her “boss really cares,” and part of the reason she said they cared was because employees were allowed 15 minute breaks during their shifts, “which most restaurants don’t do,” Lords said.
For an employer to not allow even 15 minute breaks for employees who are on their feet constantly, running back and forth to meet customers’ demands and sometimes being forced to deal with the ever-infamous Karen after hours of work is ridiculous. It’s harmful not only to the employees, but to the employers as well.
Restaurants and other hospitality employers have a much higher turnover rate than many other industries, and are often paid the least. The minimum wage in Idaho is ridiculously low, sitting at a mere $7.25 an hour, but tipped workers can make even less. Minimum wage laws in Idaho allow employers to pay tipped workers, like restaurant servers and baristas, as little as $3.35 an hour.
There is absolutely no way anyone could live on those wages in 2022, after the U.S. has seen record inflation rates. Prices were 8.5% higher in March this year compared to last year, and they aren’t expected to go down any time soon.
With the swiftly rising prices, low pay and high stress environments of many Idaho jobs, it’s no surprise that there are high turnover rates in some of the most important industries in the state. The laws businesses follow for the sake of “individual freedom,” a term used widely throughout the Title 44 Labor laws, are harmful to people in the economy we currently function in.
This is all just scratching the surface of the injustice done to Idahoans through the lack of employee protections. As college students, we’re the ones who are most likely to be taken advantage of through these laws.
Out of over 12.6 million people working in the leisure and hospitality sector in the U.S., just over 56% of them are between the ages of 16 and 34. We make up over half of the workers in that industry. In Idaho, we’re left without protections from losing the jobs keeping us barely afloat.
We shouldn’t have to fight this much for basic human decency and accommodation in our workplaces. For the majority of our lives, we will dedicate our time and energy into our work whether we enjoy it or not, and Idaho gives employers more than enough chances to take advantage of us.
Employees need protections too. The system Idaho functions under doesn’t support “individual freedom,” it supports dependency on a toxic work environment where we’re barely functioning enough to do our jobs correctly.
– Editorial Board