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Microsoft Backs Bill To Give Harassment Cases Their Day in Court, Waives Its Own Arbitration Clauses (geekwire.com)
Microsoft is throwing its weight behind a Senate bill that aims to ensure victims of workplace sexual harassment can make their case in court. In doing so, Microsoft has become the first Fortune 100 company to back the bipartisan effort to ensure that companies aren't able to keep such allegations from becoming public. From a report: The tech giant says it's also waiving its own arbitration requirements for harassment claims in the "small segment" of Microsoft employment contracts that contain them. Microsoft says it has never enforced an arbitration requirement in a sexual harassment case. However, the requirement does exist in employment contracts with some Microsoft corporate vice presidents, legal and corporate affairs employees, and company founders who joined Microsoft through acquisitions.
I am having great difficulty seeing any possible way that this action by Microsoft can harm Linux or other open source projects? So why is Microsoft doing this?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
If so I'll believe Microsoft is serious.
Why are companies allowed to prevent their employees from going to the court? Corporate law trumps state law?
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
It likely applies to all workplace issues.
See James Damore et al?
Both victims are entitled to a day in court and it will be far better than âoetrialâ by HR executive and council. In the exceedingly rare cases where an accusation is false, a court of law gives the accused a reasonable chance to prove it.
This is good.
I'm looking at you, government. Stop with the taxpayer funded slush funds to quiet your accusers. Let's treat every the same, regardless of their employer. What a concept!!!
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Nothing. You can report the harassment to the police, and you can sue the person who harassed you. You can still sue the company in civil court but they can fire you for breach of contract.
Contracts that prevent you from reporting criminal activity are not enforceable.
https://i.imgur.com/g2qcX4p.jp...
so i got her back, i got her back real good
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Why are companies allowed to prevent their employees from going to the court? Corporate law trumps state law?
Contract law is what we are talking about and companies are forcing employees to sign forced arbitration agreements as a condition of employment. State law is typically mute on the subject so because it isn't prohibited it is permitted. Naturally forced arbitration tends to heavily favor the companies which is a huge problem. Once enough companies insist on such clauses employees don't really have the option to seek employment elsewhere under less oppressive terms.
Personally I think forced arbitration as a condition of employment is a reprehensible practice that should as a general proposition be illegal.
Companies like Microsoft, Google, Uber, Amazon, and Apple do, then the devil is in the details. They are probably coming out publicly and saying "we are going to do this out of a moral obligation" to avoid legislation with a real effect being passed. If you make worthless policies with no bite, you can always tell the public and your shills in Congress "but we don't need anymore rules because look how good we are without them".
Enough with the kangaroo "courts" of HR departments and their equivalents in colleges and universities. If there is evidence of a crime being committed, let the courts prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. If not, fuck you.
only sexual harassment?
This is really a difficult topic as it crosses the line between professional and personal. Indeed, we're even seeing reports of harassment/abuse where it is fully acknowledged that the relationship at the time was entirely consensual (but down the road, or even in support of others, considered inappropriate or regretful).
The problem with that, is it destroys the entire 'objective' framework of success and promotion (hiring too!) as merit-based, meeting expectations, measured against productivity, etc.. Ironically though, we're increasingly in a world where the professional can't be separated from the personal, and it goes 24x7x365 and world-wide. One might even note there is no actual product to be productive about any more, in many fields (it's all service, update, and delivery, to satisfactions).
Perhaps there is neither time nor place to be personal anymore, including in the past, - and if it all comes back to personal and personalities, there may be no more objective measures. This is also a 2-way street: right now, we're seeing the monsters called out for abusing their places of power, but after they're gone, what and who's next?
Welcome to the United States of America. You must be new here! Yes, corporations always trump individuals in the United States, whether it's in regards to legal, financial, or even health issues.
I don't respond to AC's.
And protection from frivolous/false claims.
How about prohibiting making the identity of the actual person you are accusing known in public, until a court adjudicates and confirms that accusation.
It's all too easy to throw around harmful false accusations. That's probably what the arbitration agreements are intended to do --- keep harmful false accusations from being public until arbitrated and reviewed. Forced arbitration IS a legal and reasonable way of settling claims without unnecessary harm to the innocent when the accusations turn out to be clearly false.
Now why the fuck would I want to touch such a superficial bitch with anything but a ten foot pole?
And I'm not talking about my dick.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What 'day in court'...sexual harassment or harassment in general isn't a crime. If it rises to the level of extortion (e.g.a 'quid pro quo'), assault, rape etc. then these should be absolutely treated as a crime.
Beyond that, we seem to be getting to the point where simply making accusations is sufficient to result in heads rolling...and I've been harassed in several ways in my life, though not sexually, doesn't that count?
Apparently, sexual harassment is now the same as assault with a deadly weapon. This sort of hyperbole would be funny if it didn't trivialize the experiences actual victims of sexual violence suffer.
They've just found a way to say "I really think people accused of criminal things should get their day in court" while still officially taking the side of the accuser.
This makes sense. I mean we've learned that "company/individual paid a settlement ten years ago, the details are sealed" is in many ways just as damaging to reputation as a court case.
Why are companies allowed to prevent their employees from going to the court? Corporate law trumps state law?
Contract law is what we are talking about and companies are forcing employees to sign forced arbitration agreements as a condition of employment. State law is typically mute on the subject so because it isn't prohibited it is permitted.
No. The problem is that Federal Law has been written by Congress to allow companies to keep claims out of court, because court is expensive and public--and to avoid subjecting claims to the whims of a jury. So almost all well-drafted consumer contracts can't be meaningfully contested in court because they usually contain arbitration clauses. Sometimes you can get out of the arbitration clauses, but usually you can't because the Federal Arbitration Act preempts state law.
Real lawyers write in C++
That's certainly a solution for you, as you sound like the emotionally stunted troglodyte who has no idea how to behave around women.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
> No. Voluntary relationships tend to be contractual -- governed by a contract.
It's possible that most employment contracts are considered so one-sided that it's a contract of adhesion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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Says the person who works around women every day and doesn't imagine that they're all out to cut off my genitals. You know, I'm an actual functional adult, not some 4chan man child
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I'm no fan of Microsoft, and haven't been since the early 1990s. I will never forgive them for the ways in which they've held the technology back through their monopolistic and anti-competitive behavior, some of which persists even today.
But they deserve credit where credit is due, and this is IMHO a good move: good PR for them, good for any of their employees who ever have a grievance, and good for the wider community in setting a higher standard for corporate behavior, and lobbying for proper reform that should do away with arbitration clauses altogether.
So well done, Microsoft. (I never thought I'd type those words)
I used to work in IT. Now I work in sales. I'm telling you this from experience.
If you're the sort of person who can get themselves fired for talking about the weather, you had better not ever come and work here in the UK. 98% of conversations at work are about the weather. (The other 2% are about football).