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Supreme Court Upholds Workplace Arbitration Contracts Barring Class Actions (nytimes.com)
The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that companies can use arbitration clauses in employment contracts to prohibit workers from banding together to take legal action over workplace issues. From a report: The vote was 5 to 4, with the court's more conservative justices in the majority. The court's decision could affect some 25 million employment contracts. Writing for the majority, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said the court's conclusion was dictated by a federal law favoring arbitration and the court's precedents. If workers were allowed to band together to press their claims, he wrote, "the virtues Congress originally saw in arbitration, its speed and simplicity and inexpensiveness, would be shorn away and arbitration would wind up looking like the litigation it was meant to displace." Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg read her dissent from the bench, a sign of profound disagreement. In her written dissent, she called the majority opinion "egregiously wrong." In her oral statement, she said the upshot of the decision "will be huge under-enforcement of federal and state statutes designed to advance the well being of vulnerable workers."
The NLRB is given the power BY LAW to give employees rights. Sad that American courts seem to always side with the Big Corp, not the little guy who's been screwed over.
I'm pretty far left and mostly anti-corporation, so to be honest I don't know what I would do. Class action doesn't seem like the best option, though, as lawyers are typically the only ones that win.
I hate fat people.
As he said in the opinion, it's highly debatable of this is good policy, but it's quite clear what the law is. Congress makes law, not unelected, unaccountable judges.
Seems to be they sided with the Law and court Precedence.
"Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said that the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act trumps the National Labor Relations Act and that employees who sign employment agreements to arbitrate claims must do so on an individual basis — and may not band together to enforce claims of wage and hour violations.
"The policy may be debatable but the law is clear: Congress has instructed that arbitration agreements like those before us must be enforced as written," Gorsuch writes. "While Congress is of course always free to amend this judgment, we see nothing suggesting it did so in the NLRA — much less that it manifested a clear intention to displace the Arbitration Act. Because we can easily read Congress's statutes to work in harmony, that is where our duty lies."
NPR
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Go shill somewhere else. Your reference was what year? 1960 - 1970 range? it probably payed something liveable abck then.
minimum wage is not a living wage today, even if it was full-time work, which it almost-never is.
just show up and work? pfft --- employers are demanding their minimum wage employees not have a set scehdule -- have weird ever-changing shifts, not know their schedule until the night or just hours before. AND you are required to call in. they dont call you...... so you have no safety in scheduling daycare or even relaxing and using your non-work-time for recreation, let alone having a second job.
Their oppressive in that they pay minimally while impeding the ability to even work a second job. they impede to day to day life.
These employers make HUGE NET PROFITS, while keeping employees on minimum wage and thr STATE has to come in and pay food stamps.
of course, one could not work mimum wage --- and be kicked to the street, where almost everything is illegal. Loitering, park bench sleeping, or just sleping in a bush....So being a law-breaker one would then be placed in jail/prison where one is not rehabilitated, but punnished, and maybe also forced to also work for a PUBLIC/PRIVATE for-profit company.... for maybe 20 cents an hour.
I don't know about you, but i also feel if people who work in toxic environments, it should be the responsibility of the employer to contain that toxin. So the workers don't bring home mesothelioma to their children who hug their pan-legs, or the community at large. But the supreme court disagrees with that as well. disgusting.
but oh what country did you say you lived in? it doesn't sound like the usa i know and grew up in.
These jobs you're describing are all hourly positions. Legally your employer has to offer you breaks, and not just for meals. Plus a whole bunch of other stuff. It's all pretty straightforward, work and get paid. But not paid very much. You'll be kept part-time, and clear perhaps $10k-$20k a year. Maybe less. Maybe a lot less.
You'll need to hold down 2 or 3 jobs, at a minimum, to keep body & soul together. Oh, and some of those hourly jobs, you're on call. No pay unless they call you in. But if you can't make it when they call, you'll make their shit list & they'll never call again. Unless you're a really attractive woman and the boss wants to hit on you.
Move up a notch, say to the programming world, and now you're salaried. Your employer can demand 60/80/100+ hours a week from you with no additional pay. They can fire you at any time. I had a boss that would schedule impromptu meetings at 8 o'clock at night, knowing that if I missed my bus I'd have to work several more hours before the next bus came. (Or wait outside in a dangerous neighborhood in sub-zero temperatures.) I've had bosses yelling in my face, "What do you mean you're going home. It's only 9pm. Your cat won't starve if you don't feed it for one night." (No, I'm not working there anymore. But it sure was difficult interviewing around while working so much overtime!)
Now add in the part where you have to sign a contract that not only signs over anything you do or create while employed, but also dictates where you can work and who you can talk to for 5 years or more after leaving said employment. And some of those contracts, they were pretty generous. I saw one that ruled out pretty much any commercial software development anywhere in the world for 5 years after leaving that job.
Yeah, it's pretty bad out there. But if you don't sign, you don't work. It seems like every employer has a contract like that. Eventually you get hungry.