Originally from Dispute Resolution Journal

The vast majority of employees in America today can be fired at any time and for any reason. They are employees "at will." The rule of "employment-at-will," however, has been attacked in recent years as being anachronistic and outdated, and numerous court cases have been brought to challenge the doctrine. But state court litigation, due to its adversarial, time-consuming, and costly nature, may do more to aggravate the problem than ameliorate it. As a result, industrial relations, legal, and personnel professionals have focused attention on possible alternative methods of resolving at will employment disputes that use arbitration or mediation or a mixture of both.

The authors believe that a problem with the use of arbitration alone is that it may retain, albeit to a lesser degree, some of the negative attributes of court litigation. If the parties are overly contentious, arbitration can be costly and time consuming. A new, novel, and relatively untested approach that may prove effective in resolving at will disputes is consensual mediation. Preliminary data from the state of South Carolina, which has embarked on such a program, show that a mediatory approach may well have widespread promise for the resolution of such disputes.