Kansas Employment Law: termination memo, decision sequencing, and when review matters

Kansas employment law is shaped by the state's right-to-work tradition, its predominantly non-union private sector workforce, and the distinctive labor economics of three dominant industry clusters: aerospace manufacturing in the Wichita metro (which employs approximately 40,000 workers directly in aircraft and parts manufacturing, giving Wichita the highest concentration of aerospace manufacturing employment per capita of any major American city), agriculture and food processing across the rural counties (with Kansas's cattle feedlots, beef packing plants, and wheat cooperatives employing tens of thousands of workers in remote communities where alternative employment is limited), and the state government in Topeka (Shawnee County) — with the Kansas Legislature, the Kansas Supreme Court, and the state executive agencies providing significant public sector employment in the capital region. Koch Industries, headquartered in Wichita, is one of the largest private companies in the United States and the parent company of an extraordinarily diverse set of subsidiaries; its employees and contractors in Wichita and across Kansas span refinery operations (Flint Hills Resources), chemical manufacturing, and industrial manufacturing.

Kansas is a right-to-work state (KSA § 44-831) — one of the original right-to-work states, with legislation dating to 1958. Kansas's workforce unionization rate is among the lowest in the United States — approximately 7-8% of workers (slightly higher than Mississippi but far below the national average), concentrated primarily in federal defense-related employment (McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Fort Leavenworth in Leavenworth County, Fort Riley in Geary County), some public-sector and education unions (Kansas National Education Association for teachers), and the remaining unionized workforce in Wichita's aerospace plants (IAM — International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers — has historically organized some Boeing and Cessna/Textron workers, though the Boeing manufacturing presence in Wichita has significantly declined since Boeing sold its Wichita operations to Spirit AeroSystems in 2005).