Google Ends Mandatory Arbitration— A Practice That Reflects the Low Status of Employment Law in HR Organizations

Employment law is an elective in the handful of Master’s degree programs in the U.S.  It’s no surprise, therefore, that wage-and-hour violations are so common. And it’s no surprise, either, that senior HR VPs (and similar) began to implement mandatory arbitration programs in the 1990s.

Their reasoning? The Supreme Court is allowing it. We control the process. We avoid court. We avoid bad publicity. We avoid class actions. We avoid costly damages. We suffer very few consequences for sexual harassment. 

Mandatory arbitration is so one-sided, it’s become a good place to hide sexual assault.

It’s also kept women from seeking justice.
When you look at the MeToo movement, most of those published accounts involve some aspect of the workplace (Harvey Weinstein's "casting" arrangements; Les Moonves, Matt Laurer, Steve Wynn, Prof. Lawrence Krauss, Corey Coleman (HR Director of FEMA), Judge Alex Kozinski ... and many more.

The recent walkout at Google over that firm’s cover-ups of sexual harassment and assaults embarrassed Google. It exposed the hypocrisy that progressive HR firms care about their employees.

How does this relate to the teaching of employment law in HR programs? 

Simple: When your HR organization can sweep its legal controversies—not only harassment, but wage-and-hour, disability, FMLA, and most other employment practices— under the rug, there is no reason to pay attention to employment law.

Allowing employees the basic right to sue in a court of law offers some hope for change— and for starters, real consequences for harassers and predators in the workplace.

…

Here are key findings on mandatory arbitration from a liberal think tank, the Economic Policy Institute:

More than half—53.9 percent—of nonunion private-sector employers have mandatory arbitration procedures. Among companies with 1,000 or more employees, 65.1 percent have mandatory arbitration procedures.

Extrapolating to the overall workforce, 60.1 million American workers no longer have access to the courts to protect their legal employment rights and instead must go to arbitration.

Of the employers who require mandatory arbitration, 30.1 percent also include class action waivers in their procedures—meaning that in addition to losing their right to file a lawsuit on their own behalf, employees also lose the right to address widespread rights violations through collective legal action.

Mandatory arbitration is more common in low-wage workplaces. It is also more common in industries that are disproportionately composed of women workers and in industries that are disproportionately composed of African American workers.