Alaska Employment Law

Here are some further thoughts on Tom Daniel’s excellent presentation to the Employment Law Section yesterday noon.

Limits on public employment contracts:  Zerbetz v. Alaska Energy Center, 708 P.2d 1270 (Alaska 1985), addresses the permissible terms in an employment contract with a public entity.  In Zerbetz the Court held that the statutory authority to “employ” a Director did not require at-will employment, i.e., the Center could enter into a term contract for cause (the common law rule was to the contrary).  The Court said:   “[w]e hold that a public employer may enter into formal contracts providing for job security with its employees absent explicit legislative authorization.”  Id. at 1275.  The Court also held that placement of a position in the State’s “exempt” category did not mean that the employee was necessarily “at-will.”  Id. at 1276-77. 

But the public entity did not have a free hand in drafting the terms of the contract.  If the legislature placed ultimate responsibility in the Center’s Board, the Board could not contract away to the Director its right and duty to meet that responsibility.  Nor could the Center draft the contract so that it would suffer a large financial penalty if it abdicated its legislatively-imposed responsibility.  Id. at 1278-81.  Either provision would violate public policy and, thus, void those portions of the contract.

Statement of cause to an at-will employee:  Chijide v. Maniilaq Ass’n of Kotzebue, 972 P.2d 167 (Alaska 1999), might give some pause to an employer thinking of telling an at-will employee the reason for discharge.   There, the employee’s supervisor wrote a letter to the director of personnel, stating the reasons for the non-renewal of employment.  When the employee somehow learned of the letter, she claimed it converted her at-will employment to just cause employment, and entitled her to a Due Process hearing.  The Court rejected the employee’s claim, but with perhaps a suggestion that the result might have been different if the employee had been the intended recipient of the letter.

[Employee] Chijide points to [supervisor] Shackles’s July 9, 1993 letter to [personnel director] Carolyn Smith as evidence that her termination was “for cause.”  The fact that Shackles provided a reason for her recommendation that the hospital decline to renew Chijide’s contract does not convert the nonrenewal into a dismissal for cause.  Shackles’s letter was addressed to [employer] Maniilaq, not Chijide.  The notification Maniilaq sent to Chijide was unambiguously a notice of non-renewal that gave no cause for ending Chijide’s employment.  We therefore affirm the superior court’s grant of summary judgment on Chijide’s due process claims.

Id. at 172.

Moral turpitude:  For a discussion of the kinds of conduct that may constitute moral turpitude and thus satisfy that element of a “liberty”-based Due Process claim, see an earlier discussion in this blog.