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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) 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.