Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Supreme Court Upholds Workplace Arbitration Contracts Barring Class Actions (nytimes.com)

Posted by msmash on from the work-culture dept.

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."

2 of 343 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I don't know how to feel about class actions by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Would you be against them if workers had a genuine complaint and their employer generally treated them like sub-humans? Say they were exposed to toxic chemicals without their employer telling them or giving them proper protection, and are now paying through the nose to deal with health problems 20-30 years later.

  2. Re:One more reason to love unions... by Hodr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Being highly uninioned in a country that already implements many of the most costly demands of labor isn't exactly a huge feat.

    Union Workers - "We demand reasonable cost healthcare"
    American Businesses - "No way, we would go bankrupt"
    German Businesses - "uh, what? We don't have anything to do with your healthcare costs"

    Union Workers - "We demand 4 weeks of vacation!"
    American Businesses - "No way, we would go bankrupt"
    German Businesses - "But we already give you 6 if you count holidays. It's the law afterall"

    etc. etc. etc.