Maybe we should thank Joe Ricketts for closing his Gothamist and DNAinfo websites in petty retaliation for the writers’ vote for a union. Or maybe the NBC News executives who turned a blind eye to Matt Lauer’s harassment of female colleagues until the #MeToo movement empowered enough of them to make their complaints too official to ignore. Or the federal contractor that fired a bicycle-riding employee who flipped off the president’s motorcade, a gesture captured in a photo that went viral.

These bosses revealed that a workers’ rights system that is applied unequally to only some workplaces and only some employees is no way to ensure that everyone’s rights are respected. Workers may have the right to do their jobs free from sexual harassment and assault, but it has become increasingly clear that employers violate those rights by exploiting the power disparity in the workplace.

Similarly, workers may have a right to organize a union and collectively bargain, but in reality workers are often fired for organizing, and the laws against such practices — like all protections against unfair terminations — place the burden on employees to prove illegitimate intent.

Bosses hold all the power in the at-will employment system that most American workers are subject to, under which they can be fired for “good cause, bad cause or no cause.” Employees who speak up risk everything — their jobs, their reputations, their livelihoods — while facing the unfair legal burden of having to prove their boss’s intentions. Until workers have the freedom from unfair firing, too many workplace rights will remain unfulfilled.