Same thing here, almost exactly, although they didn't wait a couple of years before contacting me again---more like a month.

On a third go-around, I asked what the deal was and haven't heard much from them since.

Get any offer in writing, and if it's rescinded, the words you want are: promissory estoppel.

At-will employment, unfortunately, makes that doctrine legally useless for workers in America.

A friend of mine came to this country (Israel) to work as a chemical engineer. His salary isn't large by American standards ($27,000 USD/year take-home pay), but for here it's pretty good and the benefits package is superb. The thing that really hit me, though, was that his job offer was a literal, written contract specifying, in legally binding terms, the conditions and compensation of his employment.

It was one of those "Why don't we have that back home?" moments. Why don't Americans get binding contracts for jobs? Honestly, which bastard came up with at-will employment?

"Honestly, which bastard came up with at-will employment?"

Some bastard, and they are not in short supply, who was not a fan of unions or the strengthened bargaining position that they give employees.

See also "right to work" states, where "right to work" means "right to find yourself without work and without recourse".

But at-will employment is actually a separate issue from unionization. At-will employment goes against what most countries and cultures regard as a cornerstone of capitalism itself: clarity and enforcement of contracts.

At-will employment: anyone can terminate the employment relationship at any time, unilaterally, for any reason or no reason. The party in the stronger bargaining position can unilaterally demand changes at threat of leaving/firing, more or less whenever they want.

No at-will, no union: employment is governed by a contract negotiated and bound at the start of the job. There are set terms, and agreed amounts of leeway. Either party who decides to unilaterally cheat the other can be taken to court and legally held responsible to the other party.

Seriously, why should Americans consider it normal to sign a Nondisclosure Agreement when beginning work for a new company but completely out-of-the-blue to have the employer be legally responsible for granting so simple a "privilege" as a 40 hour work-week without threatening to fire you?

(Which, by the way, doesn't mean things like long work-weeks don't exist in "contract employment" countries. My friend I mentioned has a standard week of 45 hours. That length is set by his contract, which he agreed to. What they can't do is sign him to a 45-hour week and then start regularly demanding 55 hours each week. This pleasant standardization of his hours allows my friend to attend language-immersion classes after work to get his Hebrew up to par -- an absolute must for integrating fully into the Israeli economy as a competent worker.)

Yes, that's so, at-willness of employment and unions are separate.

I nevertheless believe it comes from the same impulse, because, in general, the employer is in the stronger position than the employee. (Not always, of course, and it's certainly possible that some employers regret not having contracts with certain of their employees.)

Union rights and at-will employment are intimately connected.

What do people get fired for? It's rarely a true "performance" issue. Mostly, it's anything that the company judges to be against its interests. (In contemporary companies where managers can unilaterally fire people, it's anything that is judged to be against the manager's interest.) Anything that is perceived as disloyal, no matter how small, will usually lead to termination. That's how human societies tend to work, so it's not reasonable to expect that (absent legal incentives to operate differently) corporations would behave differently.

At-will employment, philosophically, trusts the company to pursue its own rational interests and gives it the right to terminate an employee if it believes retaining him to be outside of its interest. I don't fully agree with it, but that's what it is.

Collective bargaining is something that governments have decided that workers have the right to do, even though unionization is decidedly against management's interest.

The fundamental question here is: is it reasonable to expect companies to continue to employ people who, lawfully and ethically, act against the company's interest? There's no simple answer to that one. Greg Smith didn't do anything wrong, but I can't say Goldman would have been wrong to fire him (had he not resigned). On the other hand, the social benefit to unions (in theory, at least) and whistleblowing provides a good reason for the law to protect some categories of employees acting against employer interests.

Over time, the laissez-faire policy regarding employment relationships has been scaled back-- in the U.S., not enough; in many European countries, too much. It's now technically illegal to fire someone for attempting to organize a union, filing a discrimination or harassment claim, escalating a disagreement to HR, or even publicly disclosing one's salary (try that one in most white-collar contexts and see how long you last!) The problem with at-will employment is that companies have become very good at making illegal firings look "performance"-related.

> Seriously, why should Americans consider it normal to sign a Nondisclosure Agreement when beginning work for a new company but completely out-of-the-blue to have the employer be legally responsible for granting so simple a "privilege" as a 40 hour work-week without threatening to fire you?

The same reason half of Americans wholeheartedly approve anything else that screws them over. At least it's not so bad here that the employer has at-will capability but the employee must give notice to quit.

One day the workers will be billionaires and at that point they want to be able to tread upon their underlings as they themselves were tread upon?

Basically any state where the majority of people there see "right to work" and that's all the info they need to believe it means something good.

At-will employment is complicated. Very complicated.

The truth is that you should usually take the severance as offered, because a lawsuit usually isn't worth the time and reputation risk. That said, there are reasons companies write severance contracts. They're afraid of lawsuits, and secondarily about what you might say about them.

At-will protects the right to end employment for business reasons (layoffs) and to fire people for objective, published performance standards. The first of these, I think, is completely reasonable. The second would be reasonable if the standards were published before people accepted the offer.

Performance improvement plans (PIPs) attempt to make subjective firings look "performance" based, but if you know how to play that endgame, you can draw it out and make your manager's life hell without giving him anything objectively fireable. (You shouldn't make his life hell. In fact, if you can strike a deal with him where he improves your review so you can transfer, and you get the hell out of his way, that's better. You should get a new job and resort to endgame tactics only if you need more time at the old job.)

With a rescinded offer, there's no performance case, so it's only legally acceptable if the company can establish a business-related reason (such as a plant closing or a hiring freeze).

It's very unlikely that one will actually end up in a lawsuit over this. You use the words "promissory estoppel" to get a severance package, and you take it.

Personally I think these anti-discrimination laws are likely fundamentally flawed.