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posted by janrinok on Wednesday May 23 2018, @12:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the no-one-was-surprised dept.

The Center for American Progress reports

The Supreme Court held on [May 21] that employers can force their employees to sign away many of their rights to sue their employers. As a practical matter, Monday's decision in Epic Systems v. Lewis [PDF] will enable employers to engage in small-scale wage theft with impunity, so long as they spread the impact of this theft among many employees.

Neil Gorsuch, who occupies the seat that Senate Republicans held open for a year until Donald Trump could fill it, wrote the Court's 5-4 decision. The Court split along party lines.

Epic Systems involves three consolidated cases, each involving employment contracts cutting off employees' rights to sue their employer in a court of law. In at least one of these cases, the employees were required to sign away these rights as a condition of starting their job. In another, existing workers were told to sign away their rights if they wanted to keep working.

Each contract contained two provisions, a "forced arbitration" provision, which requires legal disputes between the employer and the employee to be resolved by a private arbitrator and not by a real court; and a provision prohibiting employees from bringing class actions against the employer.

Writing with his trademarked smugness, Gorsuch presents Epic Systems as a simple application of a legal text. "The parties before us contracted for arbitration", he writes. "They proceeded to specify the rules that would govern their arbitrations, indicating their intention to use individualized rather than class or collective action procedures. And this much the Arbitration Act seems to protect pretty absolutely."

It's the sort of statement someone might write if they'd never read the Federal Arbitration Act--the law at the heart of this case--and had only read the Supreme Court's decisions expanding that act's scope.

[...] Epic Systems means that employers who cheat a single employee out of a great deal of money will probably be held accountable for their actions--though it is worth noting that arbitrators are more likely to favor employers than courts of law, and that they typically award less money to employees when those employees do prevail. The biggest losers under Epic Systems, however, will be the victims of widespread, but small-scale, wage theft.

Via Common Dreams, Public Citizen says Congress Should Overturn Today's U.S. Supreme Court Decision Eroding Workers' Rights

Public Citizen is a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization founded in 1971 to represent consumer interests in Congress, the executive branch, and the courts.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by TheGratefulNet on Wednesday May 23 2018, @02:29PM (1 child)

    by TheGratefulNet (659) on Wednesday May 23 2018, @02:29PM (#683114)

    your neighbors were very likely 'programmed' from early childhood to think just ONE way and every sunday (you know what I'm referring to) they get another dosing of 'reinforcement' to continue to think along 'allowed' lines.

    its just that simple. it really is. early mind control so deep you almost can never counter it with logic. that's why almost no R's convert to D. the indoctrination from all directions when you are young is almost ROM-like; can't erase it like eeprom or flash; its pretty much burned in read-only after a certain point. and the R's know this and BANK on it. why do you think the R's are so damned cozy with churches and religion?

    all other conservative hatred toward libs is BS that can be ignored. there is only 1 core reason. 'the libs doing this or that to us' is not at all relevant, but its mostly what the sheep have been programmed to repeat, so they bleet it out endlessly. does not make it true; never was true. but the sunday sheep - they keep us all behind.

    --
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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 25 2018, @03:54AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 25 2018, @03:54AM (#683878) Journal

    your neighbors were very likely 'programmed' from early childhood to think just ONE way and every sunday (you know what I'm referring to) they get another dosing of 'reinforcement' to continue to think along 'allowed' lines.

    Doesn't take programming. Took clueless politicians who opened their mouths.