Imagine clearing out your desk on the last day of your job, ready to begin a higher-paying position elsewhere. But just as you turn in your keys, your boss hands you a court order preventing you from taking your new job. Instead, you need to come back tomorrow to the same job — for the same pay — if you want to work at all.
This is exactly what happened in January to seven employees of ThedaCare, a health-care system in Wisconsin. As the employees were preparing to leave their positions for more lucrative jobs at Ascension, another regional health-care network, ThedaCare sued Ascension and asked a court for a restraining order — which was granted — to stop the workers from taking the Ascension jobs until ThedaCare could hire their replacements. This happened even though there was no dispute that the workers were “at-will” employees and supposedly free to quit at any time.
The restraining order was lifted three days later, but for those three days the employees were essentially held against their will by ThedaCare with no certainty about when — or if — the court would allow them to start their new jobs.
While observers expressed shock and outrage, the court's initial order is less surprising when considered in light of the historical roots of U.S. employment law, which has its origins in English laws governing the relationship between domestic servants and their masters.
Those laws, which arose from medieval norms that English courts enforced, created a rigidly hierarchical...
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