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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: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 23 2018, @06:20AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 23 2018, @06:20AM (#682984)

    About the "Frozen Trucker". There was a lot of stuff the trucker did not know, nor have any guaranteed assurance of.

    I think ever one of us has dealt with businesstalk. Nothing there to pin down. I can't trust businesses say any more than a used car salesman.

    The company thinks they are in the clear to condemn a driver over an abandoned malfunctioning truck in freezing weather? Had the trucker followed orders, and froze doing so, just what kind of compensation would the company give the trucker's family? How do you price companionship, love, and being a dad?

    I am with the Trucker on this one. I feel self-preservation is an inalienable right, maybe surrenderable only in a military context, and even then, I feel we owe the family of the deceased a helluva lot more than "a debt of gratitude". A lifetime committment to provide for the spouse and getting the kids through college is the absolute least we could do for one who gave his life for our country. Maybe that's the reason they demanded us young kids so much in the '60's for the draft.

    I never understood why the men of the suit could get together and draft a law making it mandatory for kids to report for military service, then tell them as little as copying a song was illegal.

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