From today’s Washington Post:
Employees at Google recently organized a phone drive to lobby Congress to end the practice of mandatory or forced arbitration, in which an arbitrator — typically designated by the company — resolves a legal dispute, rather than a judge.
Over the last three decades, more and more corporations have forced their employees or customers to sign these contracts, agreeing to take their disputes to private arbitration instead of to court. A recent studyestimates that currently more than 60 million U.S. workers signed these mandatory arbitration agreements when they were hired. Anotherfound that, last year, consumers signed almost three times as many consumer arbitration agreements as there are people living in the U.S.
Arbitration’s spread has become controversial. Many on the left criticize it, while many conservatives support it. So it may be surprising that liberal reformers were the first to make arbitration popular. Here’s how the Supreme Court and Congress helped change arbitration from a liberal cause to conservative rallying cry.ADVERTISING
Businesses win — and employees lose — more often in arbitration than in court
Arbitration produces clear winners and losers. Employees win less frequently and receive lower damages in arbitration than in litigation. Employers win more frequently, especially if they use the same arbitrators repeatedly. That’s hardly surprising, given that the employers typically choose the arbitrators. Given recent public criticism, many prominent companies have discontinued mandatory arbitration requirements for sexual harassment claims.
The Supreme Court has helped expand private arbitration. Just last week, in Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Varela, conservatives decided that workers cannot join to bring similar complaints against a company through class arbitration unless their contracts specifically allow it. The 5-4 majority opinion relied heavily upon a controversial case from last term, Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis.
These cases are just the latest in a three decades-long trajectory toward disallowing anything that discourages private arbitration, as part of a larger political strategy employed by business-friendly conservatives in Congress, the courts, and the private sector to constrict both access to courts and class-action lawsuits.
Read the complete article here..