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More Than Half of American Workers Can't Sue Their Employer (qz.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: In the past two years, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Oracle have faced various high-profile lawsuits related to their employment practices. And while those cases generated headlines, workers in almost every sector sue their bosses over emotional abuse, unpaid wages, and discrimination. The ability to sue over wrongful treatment at work is essential to the balance of bargaining power between employer and employee. Unfortunately, more than half of non-union, privately employed Americans -- some 60 million people -- have signed away this right. They are instead beholden to a process known as arbitration. Signing a mandatory arbitration agreement is theoretically voluntary, but refusing to do so can cost a candidate their job offer. Once signed, the agreement strips the employee of the right to take her employer to court for unfairly low pay, termination because of pregnancy, race-based discrimination, loss of paternity or maternity leave, and much more. According to a study published this week by Alexander Colvin of Cornell, more than half (54%) of private, non-unionized workplaces have mandatory arbitration procedures. For larger companies (over 1,000 workers), that jumps to 65%. By contrast, in 2003 Colvin found that just 14% of companies had arbitration agreements.

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  1. I beg all of you reading this to consider by megamind · · Score: -1, Troll

    What makes you think you even deserve a job? All jobs are is some amount of risk and organizational skills from an entrepreneur that has more/easier access to the resources we use to survive. An entrepreneur who has taken the risk of giving up those surplus resources in order to create something for you to do with your "skills". 2000 years ago, almost no one had a "voice" and the only thing of value worth doing was finding your own food and surviving. Now that the internet is nearly free and you can create something visual out of nothing but code, that "voice" has changed in to marketing departments. In my honest opinion, your skills are useless and underwhelming. Good luck feeding your family with ASCII/emojis.