Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by olliej 2668 days ago
Um, forced arbitration is deliberately chosen because it is

a) biased in favor of the company

b) For lower income workers costs much more than the potential "win" for getting back what you are owed - the typical case being stolen wages, that are often less then the employee born cost of arbitration.

c) They prohibit the constitutional right toclass action law suits - combined with (b) this makes mass already illegal exploitation essentially free: it's just not cost effective for victims to to individually litigate their minor costs.

Companies say it's purely about efficiency, but it is absolutely about making it uneconomical for employees that are victims of illegal actions to receive compensation. See the recent case where uber is trying to avoid the arbitration they required (https://www.reuters.com/article/legal-us-otc-uber/forced-int...), and chipotle trying to avoid the forced arbitration when their employees actually enacted it: https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-chipo...
1 comments
joshuamorton 2668 days ago
Hold on. I'm all for ending forced arbitration, but b here is wrong.

Costs of arbitration after borne almost entirely by the company. This makes it cheaper to bring a complaint. But it creates a conflict of interest where the company never loses. The arbitrator is paid by the Corp, so if the arbitrator rules against them, the Corp will just pick a different arbitrator.

link
olliej 2668 days ago
No, they aren’t - arbitration is hugely biased in favor of the company, to the extent that the only way you can reasonably hope to win is by hiring a lawyer. But then to recover your money (a few grand maybe) you’re retaining a lawyer potentially for months, but because you’re not actually in court your chances of getting your legal fees.

This ignores that if you are a low wage employee subject to this kind of contract you are unlikely to be able to afford the initial retention costs.

My inclination would be to allow the arbiter to be selected by the employee. If companies really do believe arbitration is fair they should have no problem with that.

link