In situations where the parties lack a formal contract, the law has been hesitant to recognize any claims based on either oral or written assurances of continued employment. What about a worker whose webcam reveals a Buddhist shrine in the corner of the room or a mezuzah on the door frame? Or family members who are of a different race? Or home décor, such as a rainbow flag, that suggests the worker’s sexual orientation? Imagine, for example, an office worker who is suddenly found to live in a home with multiple generations of their family, where it is clear that the primary language spoken is Spanish. However, when coworkers have the ability to look directly into one another’s homes, those associations with protected groups may become more apparent than they may be in the sterile environment of a workplace. The comparative formality and impersonal nature of many office environments may make it easier for workers to conceal-or at least to minimize or to deflect attention from-parts of their lives that may expose them to the bigoted reactions of others: their sexual orientation, religion, national origin, etc. In addition, these intimate looks into the homes of workers may reveal information that makes those workers subject to illegal discrimination. Some employees, perhaps due to the familiarity and intimacy of their surroundings or feelings of impunity that may derive from remoteness ( Diaz and Paybarah 2020), may engage in unprofessional or even vulgar behavior that is visible to their coworkers. Employees’ living arrangements and décor are now routinely on display for the curiosity or judgment of others ( Schwedel 2020). Overextended parents who are simultaneously working and facilitating their children’s remote schooling may not be as attentive to their dress or grooming as they were when they worked in the office. Video conferences can now be interrupted by children, spouses, roommates, or pets ( Vozza 2021). Meetings and other types of inter-office communication are now frequently held over Zoom or other video-chat applications, giving employers, managers, and coworkers an often-intimate peek into employees’ and coworkers’ homes and personal lives.
With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, many workplaces have shifted from in-person to work-from-home models.
What are the effects, if any, on long-standing employment traditions and practices? What are the legal issues that may arise from them? We will further discuss the challenges faced by many companies as they attempt to deal with these abrupt changes to their working environments. We will then examine a couple of hypothetical workplace scenarios that could arise in a work-from-home environment, discuss how current law would address them, and whether the letter of the law is the best source of guidance in these matters. Is there any nuance to be found, or to be desired, from employers in these unprecedented times of COVID-19? We will discuss the doctrine of employment-at-will, the standard it creates for American employment, and the various exceptions to it that have arisen over the past several decades. employment law, and particularly the powerful employment-at-will doctrine, sets a clear standard but can sometimes be a blunt instrument. How should employers and employees negotiate the strange and unexpected issues that COVID-19 has forced us to confront in the past two years? Remote work, in particular, has dramatically changed the dynamic of many people’s jobs, often altering the tasks and boundaries of employment, blurring the lines between work and home, public and private.
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