SCOTUS: Forced arbitration is a valid condition of employment

[Winehole23]

In 1925, Congress passed the Federal Arbitration Act, which (among other things) provides that an agreement to arbitrate a dispute “shall be valid, irrevocable, and enforceable.” Ten years later, Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act, which makes clear that employees have the right to work together for “mutual aid and protection.” Today the Supreme Court ruled, by a vote of 5-4, that employers can include a clause in their employment contracts that requires employees to arbitrate their disputes individually, and to waive the right to resolve those disputes through joint legal proceedings instead. Although it likely won’t garner the attention that some of this term’s other cases will receive, the decision was a huge victory for employers, because it could significantly reduce the number of claims against them.http://www.scotusblog.com/2018/05/opinion-analysis-employers-prevail-in-arbitration-case/

[Winehole23]

door open to wage theft, which is already a problem of greater magnitude than ordinary robbery and theft, in dollars:


Criticizing the majority’s decision as “egregiously wrong,” Ginsburg began by looking back at what she described as the “extreme imbalance” that once characterized the employer-employee relationship: In the late 19th and early 20th century, she observed, “workers often had to accept employment on whatever terms employers dictated.” That “imbalance,” she continued, prompted Congress to enact the NLRA and the Norris-LaGuardia Act (which preceded it) in the hope that employees could take collective action to “match their employers’ clout in setting terms and conditions of employment.” The NLRB and federal courts, she contended, have long understood such collective actions to include joint legal proceedings involving the terms and conditions of their employment.


Ginsburg lamented that today’s ruling will lead to “the underenforcement of federal and state statutes designed to advance the well-being of vulnerable workers,” because it will rarely be worthwhile for individual employees to pursue their own claims; even if they might otherwise be willing to do so, she added, they will also likely fear retaliation if they go it alone. The “upshot,” Ginsburg concluded, is that employers will “no doubt perceive that the cost-benefit balance of underpaying workers tips heavily in favor of skirting legal obligations.”

[boutons_deux]

the oligarchy and its SCOTUS hatchet men advance Capital's War on Labor,

and consolidate the irreversible coup d'etat by the oligarchy

[leemajors]

Glad someone posted this. Pretty gross decision.

[boutons_deux]

Glad someone posted this. Pretty gross decision.

wait til Federalist Soc or whoever hands Trash another Gorsuch to make it 6-3.

[CosmicCowboy]

4% unemployment. If you think you are underpaid get another job that pays what you think you are worth.

[Th'Pusher]

4% unemployment. If you think you are underpaid get another job that pays what you think you are worth.

Disregarding the fact that this decision impacts more than wages, you do understand this decision still applies when the unemployment rate is 6%, 8%, 10%, 12% right?

[boutons_deux]

this oligarchy ruling is not only about pay, but about sex, age discrimination, and even sexual abuse

Scalia screwed Ms of Walmart women, denying they didn't form a "class" for suing for bad/discriminatory pay, and

now even more sadistic sociopath Gorsuch goes further (as he was appointed to do),

shutting down even more class action suits to force employees individually to obtain legal services to go into BigCorp's bogus "arbitration" manned by BigCorp's own whore lawyers.

[RandomGuy]

4% unemployment. If you think you are underpaid get another job that pays what you think you are worth.


How much do you blame elites for the problems you discuss?
It’s quite clear to me, especially in the United States, that both the political and the financial elites have used their power to extract what political scientists and economists call rents. Which is to say, they rig the rules in such a way that they benefit while everybody else is harmed. I think one obvious example is that it used to be that capital income, from investments, for example, was taxed much more than active income from going to work and getting a paycheck. Now capital gains are taxed at a much, much lower rate than going to work for a living. And even if you have reasonably conservative values, even if you think that we shouldn’t do too much redistribution but we should reward people’s effort, that is a very strange system. Obviously this is only one small example of myriad ways in which we’ve set up the system in such a way that relatively few people manage to capture a vast share of the gains from economic growth.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/437mmq/this-is-how-american-democracy-could-end

Anything's to blame other than the rigged system that steals from the poor to give to the rich.

Got it.

[RandomGuy]

4% unemployment. If you think you are underpaid get another job that pays what you think you are worth.

What these poor people could do is get China to loan them some money in exchange for lifting sanctions on a Chinese company that skirts Iran sanctions. I'm sure that option is available to everybody.

[RandomGuy]

door open to wage theft, which is already a problem of greater magnitude than ordinary robbery and theft, in dollars:

This strikes at the heart of hyper-individualism that forms the rotten core of modern conservatism/libertarianism. A failure to acknowledge resource/power asymmetry.

[Winehole23]

a number of reform bills in this Congress relate to forced arbitration, here's the broadest one:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/630/text

https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Arbitration-FAIR-Act-CR-letter-Senate-2-28-19-FINAL.pdf

[Winehole23]

Uber gets buried by automated arbitration claims, begs drivers to sue.

1400110356979015688

[Ef-man]

Uber gets buried by automated arbitration claims, begs drivers to sue.

1400110356979015688

Nice to see tables turned on these corporations.