Everything is wrong with that. Everyone signs a contract for everything from credit card agreements to mortgage contracts. No business does anything without a written agreement. Every worker should have a written agreement with their employer. No employee should be at the mercy or whim of their employer. For most of us our source of income and benefits come from the employer. No worker should be fired or disciplined without cause. Most workers think that their employer will treat them fairly and some do but most do not. It is ridiculous that the most important thing we do has no written agreement.

Yet the rest of us working schmoes are at will employees and do just fine.

We are all protected by the Fair Housing and Employment Act and the volumes of statutes in the California Labor Codes.

Yet in addition to those statutes, government employees enjoy due process protection under the fourteenth amendment of the US Constitution that the rest of us do not have.

And you feel that government employees also need some sort of an employment contract? To perhaps protect the under performers?

If you think the state laws will protect you you are living in a fantasy world. Yes there are laws but by the time they work through the system you will be broke. You should ask anyone who works with "at will" employees who thought that hard work and loyalty would pay off and didn't need no stinkin' union and found themselves on the street. CEO's, CFO's and other high paid executives, entertainers, etc. all have contracts just why shouldn't the rest of us schmoes? The most important thing you do, work, is left entirely to the whims of an employer. If government employees had no representation (contract) every time the political heads changed there would be a witch hunt for those who did not vote correctly.

Alex, you are right about the need for some sort of agreement. But at the present time, in an employers' market, if you start to ask for such an agreement during the hiring process, you won't be hired! It's as simple as that, unfortunately. It will require a major societal change in the US for the working stiffs to be given any sort of contract. That is unless they have some skill that is in short supply. But then, if you possess some critical skill, you're not a working stiff, are you?

Under your plan every worker would need an attorney to negotiate even the simplest of employment relationship. That would be insanity.

Yes, let's create a new market for lawyers and legal services. Good plan.

No William every worker would not need a lawyer they only need to form or join a union. Union members elect thier officers and representatives and decide what is to be proposed to the employer and then vote on whether to accept or reject an employer offer and vote on whether to strike or not. The decline of unionism is directly tied to the collapse of the middle class.

Yikes, shades of the industrial revolution. You certainly were born in the wrong era.