Slashdot Mirror
Uber Drops Arbitration Requirement For Sexual Assault Victims (npr.org)
Previously, Uber required complaints to be resolved in mandatory arbitration -- out of court and behind closed doors. Today, the company announced it is "changing its policies to allow customers, employees and drivers who are sexually harassed or assaulted to take their complaints to court and to speak publicly about their experiences," reports NPR. From the report: Last month, Katherine and Lauren were among 14 female victims who sent an open letter to Uber's board, pointing to the company's own sexual harassment problems and the #MeToo movement. "Silencing our stories deprives customers and potential investors from the knowledge that our horrific experiences are part of a widespread problem at Uber," they wrote. The women's demand -- and Uber's response -- highlight the significance of mandatory arbitration agreements, which are increasingly common. The provisions are usually in the fine print -- and most people who sign the agreements don't know they have signed away their right to sue.
Likes to Rape.
Gettin RAPED in ur lil OOOOBER, clutching ur faggy TouchPhone like a millennial piece of shit
Good.
versus what the movement is Telling us what to think.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I'm thankful Uber, out of an abundance of caution concerning the potential PR blowup, revised their contracts. These arbitration agreements are going too far and it's time for some common sense regulations.
It should not be legal to sign away your right to sue simply for a common exchange of goods or services.
Did you know that there is a urologist in Austin TX named Dick Chopp?!! Isn’t that cray cray?!!
Can anyone explain how arbitration clauses work? How can a company limit an employee's rights to proceed legally against a company in case of criminal conduct?
That doesn't seem to make sense?
How in the hell is mandatory arbitration for customers legal? That makes zero sense. For any business.
they didn't do this out of the kindness of their heart. They're afraid they'll lose the ability to force their drivers and regular customers who get in wreaks into arbitration over this.
If you don't like arbitration contracts you'll need to change who gets elected. Kick the Republicans (who voted to allow companies to mandated it) and the corporate Dems like Pelosi & Schumer who did too. So far only the Bernie & Warren wing of the Democratic party has offered any serious opposition...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
making Arbitration legally binding. I forget the name of the law, but it passed with good 'ole "Bipartisan" support, meaning with Republicans and what we call "Corporate" Democrats (e.g. Democrats who side with corporations over workers). There's a small wing of the Democratic party that opposed it but there's so much corporate cash in politics now and so many wedge issues (guns, abortion, gay rights) that economic issues mostly gets drowned out and when they do make it front and center people get the wool pulled over their eyes by endless ad campaigns and a media that leans hard right on economics and gets called "Left Wing" for supporting gay rights...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The victims don't. What ever comes up in arbitration, no matter what uber says, should be revealed since it will harm Uber and possibly cripple them. Their victims lives are already ruined. Use the MAD option. In addition if Uber is hiding a crime the contract is invalid.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
come on supreme court. powerful companies shouldn't be able to contract their way out of the legal system. pretty soon everything will require arbitration.
They even said I could if I did it within 30 days and gave a phone number to do it.
When I called the call center had no idea what I was talking about. I tried several times before giving up. It was more the principle of the thing.
It was a TracFone (a ZTE brand phone as a matter of fact). ~$20 for phone and ~$20 for service. I don't really see any potential dispute with them being worth my time unless the phone literally blows up or catches on fire causing damage to me or my belongings and I don't think that will happen.
I probably could have tried harder to find someone who could do it or alternatively I suppose I could send them a physical letter registered mail, but it wasn't worth the effort to me.
And yes, I bought it as a burner phone - so I could have a phone number to give people I never want to hear from. If I can only convince "Dell Technical Support" to start calling that phone instead of the one I actually use I'll be so happy.
The arbitration clause wouldn't affect a criminal case.
A passenger who felt they were mistreated (rightly or wrongly) could sue Uber for not preventing it somehow, such as by having a more thorough background check of drivers or whatever.
I say "felt they were mistreated" because in many cases people have different viewpoints. There are instances where a clearly a crime was committed, obviously. This new policy also applies to alleged sexual harassment, though. That's a) not a crime (it is a reason to sue) and b) very, very subjective. The definition of sexual harassment is "unwelcome ...", so while one person might think they are both having fun laughing at a joke, the other person might internally feel the joke is unwelcome, and therefore potentially sexual harassment. The EOEC commission definition of sexual harassment also includes things like "offensive comments about women in general". I think most of us have seen a possibly innocent comment construed as "offensive about women in general", because someone heard something different than what the speaker intended or whatever. So there can be instances where everyone agrees no crime was committed, but one person feels a comment was offensive, and therefore sexual harassment.
Filing a charge with the EEOC results in mediation. Not that different to arbitration although the commission is less interested in protecting the corporation. It is telling the US government isn't declaring sexual harassment (and other EEOC issues) exempt from civil arbitration.
changing its policies to allow customers, employees and drivers who are sexually harassed or assaulted
I'm sure this goes without saying, but Uber have no idea how laws work.
Arbitration is a US problem.
As an example, even the Steam subscriber agreement has an arbitration clause. It's one of the clauses that is specifically listed as "ignore this if you are in the EU" (or other countries with reasonable laws).
The notion that ordinary consumers are capable of informed consent when entering into services with huge corporations is laughable. Even if people read the huge contracts many wouldn't understand them.
The analog here is statutory rape. We don't accept consent from minors because they are not in a position to make a good decision in the first place. Mega-corps occupy a similar unbalanced place of power vs an individual.
Why do rapists have modpoints anyway? When you take sexual advantage of a captive audience, you're being rapey AF
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I think the #metoo movement is fucking retarded but how the hell is it even legal for a corporation to take away a person's right to court proceedings in criminal matters? I never realized that you can just sign away your rights like that so easily.
> don't fucking hit on passengers in your cab unless they hit on you first
Well yeah.
I don't know about your friends, but most of my friends are really, really bad at knowing if someone is hitting on them. Some think people are when they aren't, most don't see it when someone is. That creates two opportunities for confusion with "don't hit on people in your cab unless they hit on you first". Was the driver hitting on the passenger? Maybe. Was the passenger flirting with the driver? Whichever he thinks, yes or no, there seems to be about a 50% chance he's wrong.
That doesn't even account for how people can get after a drink or two - exactly when people are most likely to call Uber. People sometimes sound awfully flirty after they've had a couple drinks. That doesn't mean they won't decide the next day that they didn't like the response. So the best general policy is probably "don't flirt at work". That doesn't mean you should be able to successfully sue someone because someone else responded positively to your flirty behavior.
> TFA says that it affects sexual assault cases.
As I recall, TFA links to another article, which in turn links to the actual policy statement. The actual policy covers sexual harassment, which unfortunately has a very subjective definition. Apparently it's very hard to define in a way that everyone is satisfied with.
> Assault is physical.
If there is actual touching, that's battery. Assault by itself is an attempt . That's why you typically only hear battery mentioned as "assault and battery" - because if they DID touch, then they first attempted to touch. So you pretty much can't have battery by itself without assault. You hear assault mentioned separately because someone can make an attempt without actually doing it. A problem with assault is one must deduce what was in the person's mind, what they were trying to do. Sometimes that's obvious, sometimes it's not.
The above are the classical definitions of just "assault" and "battery", without adding "sexual". Battery is touch that intentionally or knowingly causes injury, assault is an attempt to do so.
Once you get into "sexual assault", the terms used depend on the state. There is no such crime as "sexual assault" in California. It's sexual battery. Sexual assault *would* mean "tried to touch my boobs", but that's not in California law. California (and some other states) have a crime of "sexual battery" - non-consensual touching of sexual body parts for sexual pleasure. Texas is an example of a state which uses the term "sexual assault" for what would more accurately be called sexual battery, or rape.
I see this all over the place and it is royally fucked up. If I say "John stole my car" that does not make me a victim of theft. It makes me an accuser. and it does not make John a thief, it makes him an alleged thief.
Imagine I demand that white people accusing black people of crimes should be "just believed" and call any white accuser a victim. Would that not be vile and racist? So how is "listen and believe" not vile and sexist? Those accusing people of sexual crimes (male or female, because there are female perpetrators and female false accusers in the world) are not victims until the crime is proven.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
The easiest way to tell if a rule/law/ordinance/convention is reasonable, is to consider what would happen if everyone complied with it. Would the world be a better or worse place? In the case of "User Agreements", if everyone read them in their entirety, the economy would grind to a halt overnight as person after person worked their way through one 47-page hyperlinked document after another. Not to mention all of the indirect documents they would supposedly need to read ... and they would need to "check back and re-read the policy often" ... you know, in case something had changed.
It's safe to say that we'd be in extreme trouble should these documents every get read, and in fact, the companies that publish them absolutely depend on people NOT reading them, for if people did, that company would go bankrupt in very short order.
That it's completely unreasonable and impractical to read said terms, not to mention, the obligation to keep reading every TOS you've encountered over and over, is not even a controversial statement.
Another thing that completely obliterates all notions of good-faith, is that fact that the company can tell how long someone was on the "Contract" page before clicking through. They know very, very well that the use did not read the arbitration clause in 3 seconds, and knowing that, they are aware that there was no informed consent. She knows that a practical reality of living in modern society necessititates bypassing pages and pages of legalize, and our very economy depends on her not reading it.
What is the pinnacle of sadness and shame for the USA, is that a private company has to "allow" a person to exercise their legal rights on the basis that they user signed away those rights by clicking through a long document they viewed in 3 seconds. Prenups are invalidated when one spouse has legal representation and the other doesn't, but a woman can sign away her ability to go to court for sexual assault? And we allow it? We truly are the worst generations of Americans, and no amount of excuses, justifications, or snarky comebacks will change that.
If you steal a $1 pack of gum from a store, it's a criminal matter. If a company rips off millions of customers and/or negligently subjects them to sexual assault, it's a civil matter.
I shouldn't be the only one hanging my head in shame to have allowed this to hapoh look the football game's on! Go Foreskins!
shit, paragraph breaks
It is no longer possible to enforce a punitive NDA or an arbitration that restricts disclosure of sexual harassment or abuse. The legal and PR consequences will prove disastrous.