To the Editor:
Had it not been for the intervening “Library flood causes closure” headline in the December 5, 2019, edition of The Star-Herald, readers might well have been subjected to four consecutive weeks of headlines involving employment drama over local football coaches:
November 21: Football coach search begins
November 28: Ethel head football coach out
December 12: Coach firing brings parent, player upset. Indeed, the December 12th paper was also accompanied by a passionately written almost half page letter on the employment angst involved in being a football coach’s wife and living in a coach’s family.
What does a person more concerned about our local library staff having to deal with repeated book- and computer-damaging leaks have to say about this plethora of headlines on football employment dramas?
Recently I started reading the famed Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot mysteries in chronological sequence. Imagine my dismay last week when I found my next anticipated read was a soggy mass of wet pages already carried out by that day’s trash pickup, along with other of her volumes that might have been my future reads. Indeed, well before the flood, a very helpful (as always!) library staff person had to retrieve the Christie book I wanted from under what had become perpetually hanging tarps protecting entire book sections from ongoing leaks.
So what say I?
The wife of the coach who was “fired” (not from his position entirely, but from his coaching duties alone) lamented that “at will” employment was to blame for inflicting this tragedy on her husband coach, herself as coach wife, and her family as children of a coach. She pleaded for a change to protect coaches from such at-will firing. I might not have even read the letter if my Christie novel had not drowned, but read it I did. While I certainly have empathy with job loss, my basic reaction to the letter was duh!
Why so?
The letter seemed to argue that football coaches are very special employees and should not have to suffer the indignity and accompanying family vicissitudes and hardships that go with being “fired” “at will.” My “duh!” is because almost all workers or employees in Mississippi “suffer” under “at will” employment, simply because Mississippi is an at-will employment state, as are almost all other states and D.C., as well.
Mississippi is not a “right to work” state. That means that many in Mississippi can be fired without cause, or for cause, at the total whim of the employer, except for a narrow range of legal exceptions. Workers in Mississippi who do have employment contracts often only have one-year renewable (or not renewable) contracts, where the ax can fall “at will.”
And yes, coach wife, other families suffer from this, other families have to move, and other children have to relocate schools due to “at will” employment.
Furthermore, the November 28 “Ethel football coach out” and the impassioned letter of December 12 are only one side of the “at will” employment picture, the side of the employee.
The other side is provided in the November 21 “Football coach search begins.” The first sentence of that article states that “school officials are scrambling to start the search” to replace the coach that apparently precipitously resigned. That is the employer side of “at will” employment. In at-will states, the employee can resign “at will,” just as he or she can be fired “at will.” An employee can be fired, but he or she can always leave an employer in a scrambling lurch, as well.
While many argue that more power over employment resides with the employer, the employee thus also has control and power in at-will employment states. Given this, I can’t help but wonder what “at will” employment loyalties, coach and wife of coach would have demonstrated if they had been offered one of the high-paying ($85,000+) high school coaching positions in south Mississippi high schools. I think it might have been sayonara, hasta la vista, or dasvidanya to a town of slow speed or no speed internet and a Dollar General.
Aside from that, however, at least one state is actually on the same angst riddled page as coach’s wife! She has company among the brotherhood of coaches and football-is-life fans in another state. Unfortunately, I don’t know the status of the legislation currently, but New Jersey is, or was, acting as an entire state to mandate that head high school coaches be entitled to a minimum of a three-year contract, assistant coaches a minimum of two years, and that coaches can only be fired for “cause.”
Based on three headlines to one in four weeks, Mississippi is obviously a state where football drama reigns, and bedevil soggy books.
I’m certain some football fan in Mississippi will notice what New Jersey is attempting and try to follow lead. That would place all high school coaches a cut above mere “at will” workers by insuring them freedom from being fired without just cause and thus relieving their families and children from existential angst.
Whether Ethel’s 2-20 and 0-12 is “just cause” is not something an Agatha Christie reader can speak to, however.
Beverly E. Johnson
Kosciusko
