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

Free at last!!

[youngone]

Why would forced arbitration even be legal?

Re:Free at last!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Supreme Court has over the past 15 years built up a line of cases establishing that arbitration clauses in employment and other contracts are enforceable. While usually couched in freedom of contract terms, much of the impetus is to try to decrease the workload on the overburdened federal court system.

Re:Free at last!!

[AHuxley]

When a person accepts work for an ad company, they work as the ad company expects.

Re:Free at last!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why ask rhetorical questions?

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.

Re:Free at last!!

[ShanghaiBill]

When a person accepts work for an ad company, they work as the ad company expects.

The power relationship between employer and employee is not symmetrical, so employment contracts should not be "anything goes".

Nevertheless, arbitration is a more accessible and far less expensive option for most disputes. The "right to sue" is overrated.

Re:Free at last!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The "right to sue" is overrated.

Well, the nice thing about suing is that your case is heard by a judge or jury who ostensibly have no vested interest in the outcome.

Compare this with professional arbitration firms WHO RELY ON CORPORATIONS FOR REPEAT BUSINESS. Note that this is why the results of arbitration are contractually kept secret. If the world knew how lopsided the verdicts are then mandatory binding arbitration would become politically untenable.

Arbitration is so hopelessly rigged that it only exists to present the illusion of providing an avenue to pursue redress of grievances. Contracts requiring forced arbitration may as well have blanket indemnification clauses instead.

It's absolute bullshit and represents the dereliction of duty of the judicial branch of government.

Re:Free at last!!

[gumpish]

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

Why would it be in a business's interest to use fair arbiters?
Why would arbiters, who rely on corporate defendants (not aggrieved individuals) for repeat business, be motivated to render fair findings rather than findings which favor the company?
Why do nearly all contracts which require mandatory binding arbitration also specify that the results of arbitration must remain secret?
As much as you hate the idea, governments have a larger role to play than simply providing for the national defense.

Re: Free at last!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially when most of the arbiters worked as attorneys defending large crops from employement lawsuits.

Itâ(TM)s completely rigged and shameful.

Re:Free at last!!

[TheGratefulNet]

the right to sue is the ONLY power 'small guys' have.

remove that and you make us slaves. ...which is what we all CURRENTLY are, truth be told.

this is long overdue. companies have WAY too much power and this has been hurting america for decades.

companies exist for PEOPLE. its not the other way around. time to reverse 'backward land'.

Re:Free at last!!

[nzkbuk]

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

In all practical effects most contract negotiations boil down to If you want a job with us you will sign our employment contract, we will not enter into negotiation If that's not effectively the same as "forced" I don't know what is.
The exception to the above rule tends to be at C level.

Re:Free at last!!

[luis_a_espinal]

Why ask rhetorical questions?

Because it makes them feel cool or something.

Re:Free at last!!

[Darinbob]

A lot of these suits happen after someone is fired. So leaving the company in protest is sort of moot at that point.

Google owns the courts

[WCMI92]

So it doesn't matter. They have more money than God which makes them satan incarnate. Even worse.

Re:Google owns the courts

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason you hate rich people is because you aren't one.

You can be "really well off" as in, living a VERY comfortable life with many luxuries, be financially secure and financially independent, and have yourself and your family well taken care of, without having the kind of concentration of wealth that corrupts legal systems and destroys the integrity of legislative processes through lobbyists.

Believe it or not, it really does happen that people amass a respectable fortune by actually providing value in the form of things people want, things that are traded honestly and not through buying laws and corrupting processes. Then there's megacorps like Alphabet, which by the way was started with the help of government (CIA) money.

There's "rich" as in "lived within their means, made decent decisions, saved, got ahead, and enjoys a higher income bracket than the guy living paycheck-to-paycheck" and then there's RICH.

Re: Google owns the courts

[Archangel_Azazel]

I've always found it fascinating that the RICH (to borrow your emphasis) think that anyone taking their money for any reason is anathema, but uh...hey if I can take YOUR money that's my right.
Hey, you have "equal access and opportunity" to be rich here in the United Capitalist States. You just have to win the lottery or be born into money...or as some have suggested just "stop being poor".

I think we still have A LONG way to go before most folks realize they're protecting the people who hold them in chains. Weather those are iron or financial the effects can be felt just as keenly.

Good.

[BcNexus]

This is good. To quote another slashdot user named bluefoxlucid:

Arbitration is an ineffective and inefficient method of encouraging or enforcing fair and ethical business behavior.

Lawsuits allow employees and consumers to sanction a business, to hold a legal threat over its head if it acts in a way legally liable in a civil context. It's the stick that comes behind the carrot in encouraging ethical business. Without a class-action suit, each individual employee or customer must take their own time, money, and risk to address these behaviors--which means fewer individuals will achieve representation, and so the risk of harm to a business for acting in an unethical manner harmful to its employees or customers is fractional. Even if all all employees or customers did come to self-represent, they would sink an enormous amount of time and effort into seeking redress, instead of into any more-useful pursuit.

Re:Good.

[Waccoon]

Of course corporations should have a monopoly on efficiency and strength in numbers. We can't have the commoners using the same techniques as a business to make their causes practical or even viable.

Even back in the 90's, I remember each employer showing me anti-union videotapes as a standard hiring procedure. I never thought I'd see the day when arbitration became widely tolerated, let alone people believing that unions are universally bad.

Re:Good.

[TheGratefulNet]

let alone people believing that unions are universally bad.
big religion gives a side-channel to peoples' brains.

they get brainwashed by their churches (mostly republican based) and they vote against their own best interestes.

the R's are masters at this. evil as all fuck, but masters nonetheless.

unions are a balance of power. but the R's (that have a policy of being entirely pro-business and anti-consumer) convince their base that allowing unions is somehow 'anti american' and jesus will punish you for this (I'm not kidding; the thinking processes of most party republicans are broken and this is really how they see the world). this is why 'we can't have nice things'. the authoritarians ruin shit for the rest of us.

Because people make trade offs when they vote

[rsilvergun]

usually for social issues like Abortion or "Tough on Crime" candidates. So economic policy (which make no mistake, that's what this is) falls by the wayside.

Also, Google has a _lot_ of contractors, and I suspect they're not affected by this. That's the point of hiring contractors after all, it lets you do all the terrible things to employees you want while publicly saying you don't do that.

Given that you need a job to buy food to live

[rsilvergun]

then yeah, it's forced. Especially when nearly all employers do it. Google's one of the top employers so good luck getting a job with them to escape forced arbitration.

And this begs the question, should you be able to sell yourself into slavery then? If you're willing to say yes then at least your consistent, though on some level you must realize that if you're selling yourself into slavery then you're not in a position to make fair contracts. Anymore than a child would be.

Re:Given that you need a job to buy food to live

[Waccoon]

But... but... you can still work for an employer who doesn't do this stuff. The free market will take care of itself. Honest!

It's shocking how hard it is to find a EULA that doesn't have a binding arbitration cause. It only took a few years for everyone to start doing it.

Re:Given that you need a job to buy food to live

[JackieBrown]

Slavery? Wow. You really have no idea what slavery is, do you? Slaves couldn't leave their employers and take reduced wage but with better rights somewhere else.

Why don't you compare it to rape next?

Re:Given that you need a job to buy food to live

[JackieBrown]

I understand the point. But words do matter.

You're strawmaning

[rsilvergun]

I said that from the GP's argument that any contract two people enter into is valid that it naturally follows that slavery contracts should be allowed.

The Strawman in your argument is that I've said employment is exactly equal to slavery.

At the moment it's not, but it has been in the past. As for Rape, same deal. It wasn't too long ago that women were forced into "Marriage" on a routine basis.

Basically, everything is just a matter of degree. At the moment very few people are coerced to the extremes of rape and slavery, but just because it happens to be like that right now doesn't mean we can't regress, or that a significant portion of the electorate and ruling class isn't actively working on that regression.

Re:You're strawmaning

[JackieBrown]

My children are black and we've been spending a lot of time this month talking about black history.

With that and all the issues going on nowadays I think it's important not to weaken that meaning and histrionically context of that word.

That said, I'm not trying to forbid you from using it, just pointing out that overuse of a word particularity in a less offensive context can reduce the impact of the word.

Arbatration Should Be Outlawed

[BrendaEM]

In a nutshell, arbitration is an effort to strip a person of their rights, as well as circumvent the court system, and our laws, in general. Arbitration is subversive to our laws and moral standards.