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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.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 23 2018, @02:24AM (20 children)
This leftist bullshit from "OriginalOwner" is getting old. Just go ahead and change the red in the CSS to #FF0000. At least be honest about what SN is becoming. (Wait, I just implied that leftists should be honest, how silly of me...)
(Score: 3, Informative) by unauthorized on Wednesday May 23 2018, @03:48AM
Да, this is the one товарищ. It's the гулаг for him!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday May 23 2018, @04:05AM (14 children)
It's a free country. No one says you have to be here. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 23 2018, @04:45AM (13 children)
Then we're all fucked.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 23 2018, @06:22AM (12 children)
Describe a recent SPECIFIC instance of this "Leftism" to which you refer and how it screwed up things.
N.B. Here's Leftism: [politicalcompass.org] The collective ownership of the means of production by The Workers.
...and, BTW, Democrats are nowhere near "Left". [politicalcompass.org]
So, do attempt to not go off-subject.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 23 2018, @09:02AM (11 children)
Once again, let us define words properly. Oxford Dictionary defines leftism as
And "the left" as
While your expressed sentiment above does qualify (on pretty much all the grounds above), it is not the only thing that qualifies so.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 23 2018, @10:32AM (10 children)
That's nice but I'm not discussing France in 1789.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 23 2018, @04:07PM (4 children)
So, when your ilk says "It's a living document that should be re-interpreted according to modern language" or "It's just a piece of paper", etc., you are actively engaging in an attempt to overthrow the old order in favor of something radically new.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 23 2018, @07:06PM (3 children)
Bush was the one who said the Constitution is just a piece of paper. Nice evasion / projection, you crazy fucks are soooo far gone.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 24 2018, @02:06AM (2 children)
And that is relevant how? Are you claiming that OriginalOwner is channeling Bush?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @03:29PM (1 child)
Like I said, solo far gone. Can't even keep straight which comment is being replied to.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 25 2018, @03:28AM
I quoted from the comment I replied to. So looks like I succeeded that time. Of course, the lot of you could just get accounts and help the rest of us keep track of who says what.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 24 2018, @02:05AM (4 children)
as if you were reminding the person of a definition they had forgotten rather than introducing your own pet definition. I grant there might be some hidden, useful purpose to your word mincing, but currently it strikes me as merely dishonest rhetoric.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @03:08AM (3 children)
Trying to describe someone's position on the political palate using a 1-dimensional term is stupid (e.g. the lazy nitwits in Lamestream Media).
Left and Right describe one's ECONOMIC stance.
There's another axis that ascribes a value to how one is regarding CIVIL LIBERTIES (Authoritarian or Libertarian|Anarchist)
...but I wouldn't expect someone with so narrow a mind to grasp any of that.
Carry on with your usual 1-dimensional "thinking".
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 24 2018, @10:05AM (2 children)
I wasn't trying to describe your political "position". Instead, I was pointing out a pattern of behavior. Most words have standardized meaning in language. It's ok to define words in nonstandard ways as long as you are clear about what you are doing. You weren't. To browbeat someone merely because they don't use or recognize your non-standard definitions is what becomes dishonest.
This however doesn't occur in a vacuum. We have two other examples of this dishonesty which I feel obliged to present. The first is the repeated [soylentnews.org] assertion that democracy is a key aspect of his definition of big-S Socialism.
And yet you repeatedly defend countries [soylentnews.org] and dictators [soylentnews.org] which/whom don't allow that at all. How is it that so many countries you've defended by name, don't have the thing you claim to desire, democracy in the workplace? That makes me wonder what your actual endgame is here.
Finally, there are the derogatory labels and one-sided definitions. For example [soylentnews.org]
Looks to me like the argument from semantics fallacy. We agree that X is capitalist. You redefine "C"apitalist to mean something bad. Therefore, X is bad. The problem is that X is not Capitalist by your new definition.
And there's the habit of you labeling [soylentnews.org] so much of disagreement as "Reactionary" with a capital "R".
In the real English world, ideological labels are often capitalized, but only when they represent a formal ideology or religion, like Marxism or Sikhism. Who capitalizes a label for mere behavior or mental outlook? We don't say someone is Happy or a Jaywalker as if there was a formal mass movement of people following Happy or Jaywalking. Yet here is OriginalOwner doing so for "Reactionary". Let us also note that the primary tenet of "Reactionaryism" as presented above is disagreement with OriginalOwner on just about anything. It's quite the inclusive movement. We have cookies.
So there we have it: peculiar warping of words in the Marxist fashion and then getting sanctimonious when people don't use your pet definitions, defending of real world examples that are extreme opposites from your alleged beliefs, and a long history of dishonest rhetoric based on the above. I wonder who you really are and what you really believe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @05:09PM (1 child)
To be fair I've often wondered who YOU are khallow and what you really represent. You seem to have pulled back from most of the right wing craziness and focus solely on "yay capitalism" and other corporate apologetics. You routinely make errors so applying the microscope to originalowner here seems a little hypocritical.
This all started from an idiot posting: "It's a free country until Leftism rears its head. Then we're all fucked." The ignorance in that statement is appalling, the veil of "freedom" in the US is more of an Iron Curtain. The reality is that very few get to join the capitalist ownership class, it is just a dream sold to the people to make them continue striving to achieve something which is outside their grasp. Like winning the lottery, freedom in the US requires extreme luck and more often than not well connected social groups.
Pot meet kettle, "Marxist fashion" lol why not just wear a "McCarthy 2.0" shirt?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 25 2018, @03:15AM
I gave five links to examples of the problems I complained of (and I could have found more!), in addition to the original post I replied to. Can you do that?
An obvious question here is how many people really want to join the "capitalist ownership class" in the first place? Sounds to me a bit like how many children want to be an Olympic-class athlete or an astronaut, but don't want to make the sacrifices that would be needed in order to achieve that goal.
One wonders if you ever try. My suspicion is that you don't even understand what "luck" is.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 23 2018, @04:24AM (3 children)
That wasn't anywhere near Leftist, nitwit.
Had I wanted to fan the flames, I would have amended
WORKERS, UNITE!
Drive out the owners and their lackeys and take over the means of production!
Now, -that- would have been Leftist.
.
A non-abusive workplace was what a lot of folks had in USA from FDR's New Deal through LBJ's Great Society.
So, call me a Reactionary.
I long for the status quo ante. [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 25 2018, @03:18AM (2 children)
But you're not willing to support the capitalist systems that made that possible. So it doesn't really matter what you want. You aren't approaching your desires in a way that make them more accessible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @09:47PM (1 child)
Swallowing bullshit doesn't make you smart or well informed.
If the Capitalist that you work for isn't abusive, congratulations.
You are definitely NOT the norm in the 21st Century.
Allowing yourself to be hornswoggled by the propaganda of the Capitalist Ownership Class just shows that you are easily duped.
The fact is that Capitalism increases instability.
In Capitalism, a tiny number of folks end up with ALL the wealth.
Concentrated wealth (ever more concentrated over time[1]) is NOT the recipe for a stable society.
We had this figured out in the span of years I already mentioned.
...and in France in 1789, they started cutting off the heads of the selfish abusive jerks.
[1] I've mentioned many times Thomas Piketty's 696-page analysis of 250 years of Capitalism.
It doesn't end well.
Most people end up destitute.
In this era, there's even a name for those folks who are already there: The Precariat. [google.com]
People who are desperate do desperate things.
Capitalism is yet another phase through which we will pass on the way to a better system.
It's happened before with barter systems, slave economies, and Feudalism.
There's nothing inherent to Capitalism that makes it immune to replacement.
In fact, with the present increasing rate of unhappiness and instability in the world, Capitalism is ripe for replacement.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 26 2018, @03:47AM
Most people aren't the "norm".
I guess we're going to ignore that capitalist systems work and talk about nebulous "propaganda" instead. Given that most of what you speak of when you defend your ideas is rather shallow propaganda, it's a remarkable level of projection as well.
I'll note two problems with this long but irrelevant analysis. First, capitalism hasn't ended. Instead, it's going stronger than any other economic system has ever done.
And yet, due to capitalism, we are in the midst of the biggest improvement of the human condition ever.
When concrete problems are fixed, we have to move on to the imaginary ones. Let's look at the definition of this term [wikipedia.org]:
I'll note that there is probably a lot less of them today, in absolute number than there was in 1970, which is where we start seeing a huge drop in the absolute number of those at extreme levels of poverty (which is really what a precariat is). And notice the introduction of uncertainty with poverty as if that were a new thing. This is a typical reactionary tactic to undermine successful capitalist systems. But also it's only with advanced economic systems that one can thrive as a "precariat". For example, a lot of successful businesses have been created by people who moved out of their comfort zones and into lives of high uncertainty.
By flaying this term, "precariat", the promoters move from a concrete term that improving well, poverty, to a nebulous term that can be spun to not improve, even though it isn't necessarily desirable to lower society. The primary difference after all between a dynamic society and a rotting society is the level of change that is allowed in the society.
I'm all for making desperate people less desperate. Capitalist systems are very good at that.