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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 23 2018, @06:34PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 23 2018, @06:34PM (#683201)

    No fear huh? It blows my mind when people say such clueless shit, it really shows how badly you've been brainwashed. You don't believe you need government because by and large the government has been doing a "good enough" job, but idiots like you see your paycheck and just get SO MAD at how much of a cut goes to the gov.

    Yes we have a lot of things to fix in our government, but there is more good than bad. Just fixing the election process would have widespread benefits. Burning everything to the ground? Well that is how you get hordes of hungry and angry people grouping together and attacking each other.

    The "rotten" components of every government are always the people. Since there is no way to fix human nature we therefore need to keep improving our systems of government to shut down avenues of corruption. It will never be finished, but it will be hindered by the useful idiots such as yourself that get brainwashed so easily.