Why can companies still silence us with mandatory arbitration?
Moira Donegan
More than 55% of the American workforce is now subject to mandatory arbitration. This system of private courts must be abolished
When it was revealed in October that Andy Rubin received a $90m exit package after being forced to resign over a credible sexual harassment claim, Google employees around the world walked out in protest. They were disgusted at what appeared to be a reward for bad behavior, and they wanted more accountability for members of management. But they were also angry at the strategy that the company used to keep harassment claims a secret: forced arbitration.
Google employees, like their counterparts at a ballooning number of American companies, were subject to forced arbitration – meaning that if they had a conflict with their employer, such as wage theft, race discrimination, or in this case, sexual harassment, they were not entitled to take that claim to court. Instead, they would be forced into an alternative justice system called arbitration.
Arbitration is a system of private courts. They operate using different rules than civil courts – there is no judge or jury, for instance, but an “arbitrator” who is chosen by the parties, and paid by the employer, to decide the case. It is strictly confidential. Since the 1920s, arbitration has been legally binding: once parties agree to settle a dispute in arbitration, they give up their right to go to court.
The practice has been around for centuries, functioning as a quicker, cheaper alternative to the formal justice system, and it was originally developed to settle disputes between businesses. But starting in the mid-1980s, the US supreme court issued a series of rulings saying that arbitration could be used for other kinds of conflicts – including conflicts between employees and employers over things such as discrimination.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/08/forced-arbitration-sexual-harassment-metoo
Well apparently the Federalist on the United States Supreme court think that the First and Tenth and Eleventh amendments , basically don't mean anything, if especially the First Amendment ..........