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Comment by nimish | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately, this is unlikely to succeed. The court, especially under Roberts who is a fan of arbitration, has ruled in favor of arbitration clauses recently.

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I fear that you're right. It seems so blatantly obvious that employees collectively litigating employment-related claims is a "concerted activity for mutual aid or protection," and thus class action waivers do violate the NLRA. (So why is this even a dispute? Because conservatives.)

Wasn't Roberts one of the attorneys involved in formulating the current binding arbitration strategy that's being used to suppress consumer lawsuits?

I think I read that in the giant investigative piece about arbitration in the NYT.

Yes, according to https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/business/dealbook/arbitra...:

> One of the players behind the scenes, The Times found, was John G. Roberts Jr., who as a private lawyer representing Discover Bank unsuccessfully petitioned the Supreme Court to hear a case involving class-action bans. By the time the Supreme Court handed down its favorable decisions, he was the chief justice.

I hate going into the political realm, but next time someone says "both parties are the same", point out how many of these Republican appointed judges are completely against workers' rights.

Agreed. In addition to judicial decisions, Obama's NLRB has issued several common-sense and worked-friendly decisions over the past several years. The Republican member(s), which were a minority but soon will be the majority, always dissent, using tortured "logic" to justify a position that is inevitably biased towards the employer. When NLRB decisions voted upon party lines are reviewed in court, they have a higher chance of being upheld by Democrat-appointed judges.

The Republican members are there to represent management.

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