House Passes Bill to Ban Pre-Dispute Employment Arbitration Pacts (2022) | Hacker News Reader

House Passes Bill to Ban Pre-Dispute Employment Arbitration Pacts (2022)

shrm.org

67 pointsulyssys21 comments

Of course employers love arbitration. An arbitrator is not bound by precedent, the law, or even the agreement itself. Why does every corporation say they'll pay for the arbitration? Because when you're an arbitrator looking for work you want the corporation to come to you. So you rule for them as often as possible. There's no official collusion but a giant load of perverse incentive for them to be as corrupt as possible.

The company will also be acutely familiar with which arguments worked on the arbitrator in the past and which ones did not.

I am not aware of any pre-employment arbitration agreement which specifies a specific arbitrator. Most specify that a member of a specific group or association must be selected. I doubt that most employers actually know much about the individual arbitrator who is selected (ahead of the selection).

"Arbitrator" here means "the organization the company uses for arbitration", which'll have a set of training standards etc. they tend to have. You shouldn't get wildly different results with different individuals within a one.

I think you'd be surprised at how different individual arbitrators can be. Judges appointed by the same government and operating within the same laws can also vary quite widely.

I don't think that what you're saying is true. It is my understanding that plaintiff lawyers often use the prospect of legal costs at trial to extort a large number of small settlements from large organizations. Arbitration costs are usually much less expensive than either side's legal fees, so covering those costs to avoid the prospect of a trial is advantageous to the employer (and the plaintiff).

None of that requires an arbitration agreement from the start. If it really benefits both you can just both agree to arbitration. Or make it opt-in at the start with an explanation of the great benefits.

It may benefit both parties, but it doesn't benefit either counsel. The plaintiff's counsel usually operates under an agreement which guarantees them a certain percentage of any resulting compensation (contingency), and financially punishes the plaintiff for dropping the matter. Once counsel is engaged on contingency, the matter only very rarely goes to arbitration (as arbitration eliminates the prospect of favorable settlement in advance of looming litigation).

Note that this is written by an HR trade group that has lobbied against the bill. The most important piece:

> Nadler emphasized that the bill would not ban all arbitration pacts—only mandatory pre-dispute agreements. Parties would still be free to choose arbitration after the dispute arises.

Arbitration is still available, but employees can't be forced to sign agreements to arbitrate future disputes.

> Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., however, raised concerns that the broad prohibitions in the FAIR Act would prevent parties from freely entering into contracts and would burden the judicial system. "This bill will ban arbitration agreements across nearly all contracts," he said. "It outlaws arbitration agreements with respect to not only big, huge corporations but the most humble businesses and parties in the country."

Absolutely horrible, won't you think of the mom and pop shops that force their employees into binding arbitration agreements?

It's pretty mask off when a bill that makes it so that both parties have to agree and have the right to to refuse arbitration means an effective ban on it.

Honestly I've seen "mom and pop shops can't afford it" used to argue against basic human decency like paid sick leave, paid parental leave, mandatory employer-provided health insurance, etc. so many times to the point where I'm now actively biased against mom and pop shops.

A much larger proportion of companies that behave in abusive ways towards their employees are small businesses as opposed to large companies.

Aside from all of the above, small business owners are far more likely to act like they're doing their employees a huge favor by hiring them than managers at big companies. One small company I worked at was particularly abusive: we were all making 2/3 of what we would've been making at other companies, we had no health insurance (which got me financially destroyed on my taxes), no vacation days, I had to beg my boss to give me a day off if some emergency came up and I had to take off (which he'd only give me half the time), my boss yelled so much at myself and my coworkers that at any large company he would've been frog-marched into HR's office and sent packing (or rather, large companies would vet their managerial candidates so they'd never hire someone like him in the first place), we worked in an absolute shithole of an office building where things went wrong constantly, the building manager didn't give a shit, and actively treated us like garbage when we complained, and the company's leaders just rolled over and took it because they didn't have any other option (we were literally the very first tenant in an office building that had just been renovated after being closed for a decade and got a massive discount on rent because of it; we couldn't afford offices anyplace else). Every other company I've worked for has been larger than them and never pulled any of this shit. I'll never work for a small business ever again; in fact, I currently work for a megacorp and love it.

> Far reach

Political strategy to both claim political points and yet make sure nothing passes. At the end of the day, there is a whole lot of posturing and flags of victory by both sides. Republicans love it because it keeps the corporate America on their toes to keep politicians closely in their pockets. Democrats love it because it makes their party look better even if/ when they are complete trash.

Sickening.

Now do it for everything else.

Seriously… shrinkwrap arbitration clauses are even more insidious.

Thankfully it never passed the senate.

1. Why do you believe it wouldn't pass the Senate?

2. Why would you be thankful if it were to fail?

This article was from 2022. The bill died after the congress adjourned.

I handle litigation for my company. The far majority of it is someone looking for a payday. We blow millions of dollars on lawyers fighting BS lawsuits. It sickens me. I'm a lawyer and litigators disgust me (for the most part). It's 90% bottom feeders.

I would support making the courts fairer and cheaper, but a secret privated pseudo-justice system that is biased in favor of companies just isn't the way to do it.

If you want to argue that arbitration is fair, then please point to some open records from arbitration proceedings.

What about the rights of the (using your fraction) 10% that aren't bottom feeders?

Oh yeah!

SHRM.org is not biased on this topic at all, and their coverage of the topic is 100% objective! /s

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

"Don't be snarky."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Reply on news.ycombinator.com