Dear spunkets,
"She calls in and tells the boss that she doesn't have a babysitter for that day. The boss demands that she comes in, or she's fired. She stays home and is fired. Does she have a tort case for being fired w/o just cause?"
It depends.
Prior to the passage of the Family and Maternal Leave Act, pretty much, yeah, you could. Why? Because an employer can easily state that showing up for work is needed to get the job done. The dismissal is justified on the fact that the job may intrinsically require showing up to get it done.
However, with the passage of the FMLA, employers with over, I think, 15 employees (I'm working from memory, here), must provide a limited amount of unpaid leave to deal with certain sorts of family problems.
Nevertheless, should the single mom use up all her FMLA-mandated time, and the employer has properly tracked the usage of this time, and otherwise obeyed the requirements of the law, yeah, he can fire her for not coming to work because she couldn't get a babysitter.
Even under the assinine FMLA, the government has not yet given anyone a right to a job for which they fail to ever show up. But we're getting close.
It is ironic, though, that you use this act to defend against companies with the firearms policies which we have been discussing. Bottom line, a lot of conservatives disagreed with the FMLA (myself included) because it is one more instance of the government telling the business owner how to run his business.
Can the government do that? Yup. At least according to the way case law and constitutional law work in the present day in our country. Is the government required to do that? No. Would this "right" to miss work exist without this specific law or something like it? Nope.
You are pointing out another case where the pre-existing rights of businesses have been curtailed through intrusive legislation.
In this case, the government tells businesses of a certain size or greater that they can do without employees, even if they are critical (when you have only 20 workers, probably everyone is critical or nearly so), for up to 12 weeks in a given one-year period.
Just as it is not illegal or unconstitutional for companies to have employment policies that you think are foolish, stupid, or inane, it is not unconstitutional for legislatures to pass foolish, stupid, inane, and even unduly burdensome laws.
Otherwise, the entire tax code would have been ruled unconstitutional some decades ago.
sitetest
"Just as it is not illegal or unconstitutional for companies to have employment policies that you think are foolish, stupid, or inane, it is not unconstitutional for legislatures to pass foolish, stupid, inane, and even unduly burdensome laws. "
Govm'ts only justification is to protect rights. Where it protects rights, it's acts are justified. Where it deviates from that, it's acts are repugnant.
"Would this "right" to miss work exist without this specific law or something like it? Nope. "
The rights involved are the employer's and the mom's to care for her child. There is no right to miss work. The govm't recognizes that the employer's world isn't going to fall apart, because the mom's day care disappeared temporarily. They note and acknowledge the priority of rights. Just as they should note and state the correct boundaries in the present case.