If the employer and the employee wish to set employment conditions, they would form a contract. Over the decades, constitutional and statutory safeguards have been adopted to protect the employee against intrusion into his or her life by employers or invidious discrimination, while the employer's ability to conduct a successful operation with good employees of the employer's own choosing has been preserved. The public welfare has been well served by the creation of a business-promoting environment to provide jobs to our citizens.

Over the last decade, lawsuits have attacked the at-will employment doctrine and attempted to redefine these relationships through the courts. For instance, the courts have held that employers who distribute employee handbooks, whether intending to or not, have entered into a contractual agreement with their employees, terminating employment at will. Some courts have even held that although the handbook clearly states that it is not a contract, the employers have created a contract subject to enforcement by the courts. Employers complain of a chilling effect on placing any company procedures in writing.

In South Carolina, it is critical that we have an environment to foster the growth and the profitable management of business. At the same time, we must protect our citizens against overreaching management practices. The law should not be so complex that the employee is unsure if he or she is an at-will employee or when he or she has an enforceable contract that goes beyond employment at will. Neither an employer nor an employee should have to seek the advice of a lawyer in order to know the simple terms of the employee/employer relationship.

Legislation introduced this year is an attempt to recapture the long-established employment at-will policy of this state, not to make a fundamental change. When the Senate debated the bill, it became apparent that in the attempt to reduce to writing the existing employment practices, the bill was inartfully drawn. It needed amendments.

One amendment I voted for guaranteed that employees could not be fired for refusing to commit an illegal or unethical act, or for the exercise of their statutory and constitutional rights. I fully support these protections for employees who express their First Amendment rights on their cars. Employees should not be subject to losing their right to freedom of expression when that expression has no connection to the public image or business transactions of the employer. I am repulsed by the efforts of some businesses to tell employees what or where they can eat during their lunch hours or what they can or cannot have on their bumpers and in their tool and lunch boxes.

Other amendments made it clear that the bill would not affect tenure rights at colleges, and that all public employees would be protected in any rights granted to them by ordinance or statute. Protection to whistleblowers who, in good faith, report wrongdoing should be adopted.

Personally, I am of the belief that if an employer puts out a handbook with a grievance, disciplinary or leave procedure, then the employer should be bound by that procedure until it notifies its employees the policy has been rescinded. The decision to rescind or change should occur before an employee relies on the policy.

A bipartisan group of senators is attempting to bring balance, simplicity, clarity and, most of all, fairness to the employment-at-will issue. The effort to simplify and codify this body of law must be done to minimize the need for lawyers. We do not need intrusive laws to micromanage businesses or to compress the rights of employees in South Carolina. Unfortunately, people with hard-nosed agendas on both sides of the issue or those with a lack of factual information have attempted to paint us as uncaring and unsympathetic to employer or employee rights. To the contrary, we are using elected-representative government to simplify the law rather than allowing courts to complicate it. We must be able to rely on a clearly stated law passed by the elected representatives defining the relationship between an employer and an employee -- not that rewritten piecemeal by judges. I will continue to seek clarity on this issue, but I will not retreat in my firm commitment to defending the rights of our citizens whether they are employer or employee.