[unseenbastiat]

Sure. There’s still some missing pieces of the motivation puzzle missing here, such as why this issue, why this point in time, why don’t employees exercise this option more often if this is a legit negotiating tactic, etc.

At the risk of being cynical, my guess is that this is a PR stunt as much as it’s an employment negotiation. We the outside observers would be the pawns of this tactic that can produce public sentiment to influence Riot. That’s why I’m not so quick to categorize this as simply another contract negotiation.

[tomnipotent]

> There’s still some missing pieces of the motivation puzzle missing here

No there's not, you just haven't bothered to read up on the issue.

Rioters wanted a toxic senior leader fired for well-documented lapses in judgement. Instead he was given 3 months off and re-hired when the dust settled. The employees personally impacted by this are unable to pursue legal recourse thanks to forced arbitration.

[unseenbastiat]

If you take what people say at face value, then sure, the issue is simple. I think that’s an unwise presumption to always make, but YMMV.

But even assuming your explanation is correct, it is incomplete. Why now? This guy has been with the company for a while. He is hardly the only bad actor at the company, so why does his case merit more focus? Have a confluence of factors reached a tipping point? Do employees feel secure enough about their status that they can make this move?

[CydeWeys]

I don't understand the argument you're trying to make. The summary of it seems to be "Lots of bad things are happening, so why try to do anything about a particular bad thing?" The answer is because that's how you solve problems. You tackle one subproblem, then move on to the next, and continue until no subproblems remain.

The employees are fighting this particular case of injustice because they care about doing so, and because you don't solve a big problem by doing nothing; you have to start somewhere! This is the start.

[tomnipotent]

Are you seriously trying to turn this into some PR conspiracy?

> But even assuming your explanation is correct, it is incomplete. Why now?

The offender was brought back on with no long term consequences for his behavior, and now 100+ people have found the courage to coordinate and walkout to express their disdain towards senior management that thought this was ok (to put a toxic individual back in with people that are uncomfortable around him). Do you think this shit gets organized in a few hours around the water cooler or at a single happy hour?

The group walking out clearly articulated their reasons, that's on you if you can't bother to read up on it.

> Do employees feel secure enough

There's the National Labor Relations Act, plus California protects against retaliation when speaking out against working conditions.

[stale2002]

> Why now?

Because we are in a day and age where these efforts actually have a chance of success.

10 years ago, the vast majority of people would hold the same toxic attitudes that you hold, and the concerns would be dismissed.

But not anymore. Things are changing. And it is now possible to hold horrible people responsible for their illegal and immoral actions.

[gdulli]

> There’s still some missing pieces of the motivation puzzle missing here, such as why this issue, why this point in time,

That part is the easy part to understand. The employer acted in a manner that made employees want to sue. They realized the fine print they hadn't read when joining the company gave away that right. What's happening now is about drawing attention to this so that future prospective employees elsewhere are aware of it and there's pressure on companies to stop requiring it.

That's the explicit point of protest, I don't understand why you'd characterize it as a PR stunt.

Or why you'd preface your statement with a dramatic disclaimer about cynicism that makes the thing you're portraying sound more sinister.

[unseenbastiat]

That story is nice and it’s plausible. It’s also subtlety different from the story told by the article.

For instance, nobody admitted they didn’t read the fine print or objected at the time, or anything like that. In light of that, my story that “some employees had a change of heart about their contracts and took up activism” would be just as valid. You might not care about that distinction, but it puts the events in a slightly different light from the other explanation about “employees don’t have leverage when they were being hired”.

And yeah, your story would also make sense if this was a play about taking the power back over their own contracts. But considering that they are still striking over existing employee contracts would contradict your story.

Since I’m being downvoted anyway, fuck it. I think these employees are being duplicitous or at least misleading about their intentions. I think their activism has overridden any ideals they might have had about negotiating power. And I think “forced arbitration” is not worthy of moral condemnation. You are free to tell me all the ways those are terribly wrong ways to think.

[gdulli]

I don't even understand which two things you're trying to distinguish. Or where duplicity comes in. The narrative of the employees understanding too late about the rights they gave up, and then protesting, is straightforward.

I doubt the employees had ever given any thought to it, or were even aware of it, until they had a reason to look into lawsuits.

Arbitration is neither objectively worthy nor unworthy of moral condemnation. It's on them and on you to try to make your cases and influence opinion.

Like many things arbitration is probably fine in principle if treated by both parties in the spirit in which it was originally conceived. To simplify legal matters. But if it gets abused and used as a license to misbehave by one party then it should be rethought.

Maybe that's what happened here and maybe not, I don't know. But the positions and intentions seem straightforward.

[Avshalom]

this is a very interesting theory you've built for yourself: The Riot employees say they want to end forced arbitration so they are taking a public action to bring collective pressure to bear on management and you seem to thing that this is some sort of sham and they're actually taking a public action just to bring collective pressure to bear on management because they want to end forced arbitration

[stale2002]

> And I think “forced arbitration” is not worthy of moral condemnation. You are free to tell me all the ways those are terribly wrong ways to think.

Sure. Your way of thinking means that employees and execs can sexually harass people, and get away with it, without allowing the victim to achieve justice.

It allows companies to protect sexual harassers, all while being completely immune to the legal system, and making it extremely difficult for victims to hold companies responsible for protecting sexual harassers.

Personally, I'd rather live in a world where it was possible to sue companies for protecting sexual harassers, and for retaliating against victims, through our court system.

The whole point of our court system is to support the law. I don't like it when people's legal rights to justice are taken away from them, for the purpose of protecting sexual harassers.

[jakelazaroff]

I don't understand the argument you're making here. You guess this is a PR stunt to draw attention to… something other than forced arbitration? Given that all attention is focused on their explicitly stated demands around forced arbitration and sexual harassment, if this is a PR campaign in disguise for some other issue it's a huge failure.

Really, I don't see any possible gains for them here other than what they're explicitly asking for. What do you think this is really about?

[SmellyGeekBoy]

> why don’t employees exercise this option more often if this is a legit negotiating tactic

Striking / walkouts have been a "legit" negotiating tactic pretty much since employment was invented.