[Analemma_]

> "not necessarily always in favour of the employer"

You're not really helping your case here if this is the strongest statement you can make in arbitration's favor – "you're not necessarily fucked!".

The New York Times ran a series about binding arbitration a while back, and a running theme was that arbitrators who repeatedly rule in favor of individuals quickly find themselves getting no more business, as you'd expect. Thus, the incentives of arbitrators are strongly skewed to favor employers (even if not at the individual level, then definitely at the ecosystem level via selection pressure) and I don't believe for a microsecond that their decisions are fair and reasonable.