Google Will End Forced Arbitration For Employees (cnet.com)

Google said it will no longer require current and future staff to go through mandatory arbitration for disputes with the company. "The change goes into effect on March 21," reports CNET. "The search giant will also remove mandatory arbitration from its own employment agreements with contract and temporary staff, though the change won't impact staffing firms." From the report: This comes after Google employees in November walked out of their offices to protest the company's handling of sexual harassment claims. One of their demands was to end forced arbitration in cases of sexual harassment and discrimination. In January, some Google employees launched a social media campaign to pressure the company and other tech companies to drop mandatory arbitration. Mandatory arbitration often means workers can't take their employers to court when they complain internally. The campaign organizers said 60 million Americans are affected by forced arbitration.

Comments

Re:Free at last!!

[bill_mcgonigle]

Why would forced arbitration even be legal?

It's not forced, it's agreed upon contractually.

And, why? Because courts are only slightly better than spinning a roulette wheel because they face no competitive pressure to improve, ever, being a monopoly.

What they should have done here - and every REAL mutual contract does this - is to give the employees a choice of a dozen different arbiters that Google feels are fair players, and let those arbiters fight it out for employee preference by competing on the most fair dealings for employees, and let them pick a new one every n months.

When you have mutually-agreed-upon arbiters then you have a real contract. If people are signing employment contracts without ever having qualified their potential arbiter ahead of time, then due diligence cannot be said to have taken place. But many employees would rather be treated like children than do that kind of research, so perhaps even at Google it's unlikely. We can't have nice things without humans accepting adult responsibility for themselves.