Can an employee be fired for leaving his work station with a supervisors permission?

I am a California attorney and cannot give legal advice in your state. My comments are information only, based on federal law and general legal principles. YOUR STATE MAY HAVE ITS OWN LAWS THAT OFFER SIMILAR OR GREATER PROTECTION. If I mention your state’s laws, it only means I did a quick Internet search and found something that looked relevant. You MUST check with an attorney licensed in your state to learn your rights. Employees have very few employment rights, and employers have a lot of leeway in how they choose to run their businesses. In general, an employer can be unfair, obnoxious or bad at management. There are some limitations, mostly in the areas of public policy (such as discrimination law), contract law, union-employer labor relations, and constitutional due process. Please look at my guide to at-will employment which may help you understand your employment rights: https://www.attorneyqna.com/legal-guides/ugc/a-short-summary-of-california-at-will-employment . After you take a look at the guide I linked to above, you may be able to identify actions or behavior that fits one of the categories that allows for legal action. If so, you may wish to speak with an experienced plaintiffs employment attorney. The board is not set up to handle the kind of detailed analysis needed to offer helpful guidance. works best for short, specific questions that allow for short, specific answers. Perhaps more importantly, anyone can read the discussions on so they are not confidential. The employer or whomever is involved in the dispute can read everything written here. You can find a plaintiffs employment attorney on the National Employment Lawyers Association (NELA) web site www.nela.org. NELA is the largest and most influential bar association in the country for attorneys representing working people. You can search by location and practice area. Also, NELA has affiliates in every state and many cities which are listed on the NELA site. Not all NELA attorneys are named on the web site or affiliate site. This should not influence your selection; attorneys can choose whether or not to purchase a listing in the national directory, and each affiliate has its own rules for listing. I hope you can resolve your situation and wish you the best.

Pennsylvania is an employment at will state, so if you do not have a contract, you are basically at the employer's mercy in regard to termination. If you feel that the reason for the termination was pretense for discrimination regarding a protected class such as race, sex or national origin, that would be a different matter. An additional and related question would be whether you are entitled to unemployment under these facts. Since this is a termination, the employer has the burden of demonstrating that you have engaged in willful misconduct. If they are alleging a work rule violation, the employer must establish both the existence of the reasonable work rule and its violation. If the employer proves the existence of the rule, the reasonableness of the work rule, and the fact of its violation, the burden of proof shifts to the you to prove good cause for your actions.