By Wray Haynes

This week SCOTUS dealt a terrible blow to working men and women everywhere.  They ruled that nonunion/represented salaried employees cannot sue for back wages, unfair treatment, and other employer offenses via class action suits.  Using the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925 to replace and supersede the 1935 National Labor Relations Act they then dared our Congress to make changes to federal law to correct this injustice.

In short, this ruling allows employers to abuse workers and then force them to sue individually.  This would theoretically enable Amazon, known for harsh workplace behavior and culture, to have employees sign contracts dictating private arbitration, thereby costing the aggrieved worker thousands in upfront legal costs and disallowing them to be brought to task via a class action suit.

While seemingly innocent, it is a backdoor to erode the rights of workers nationwide.  Don’t have a union? Non-represented? Good. The corporate world just gained a giant chip to dissuade you from pursuing a case against them.  Women being paid less, the so-called wage gap? Tough shit. Each worker must now hire an individual attorney to represent their case.

While these cases typically involve lower-paid employees who are owed several thousand dollars -a virtual boon for some -they don’t have the money to combat the corporate lawyers, and most lawyers won’t take such a small case as the retainer would cost more than the award.  Class action suits allowed these folks a chance for a fair hearing.

California, unsurprisingly, is the only state that allows a workaround.  Legislation from 2004 allows class actions suits to side-step arbitration contracts as long as the suit is reviewed and signed off by the state labor department.

While I’m not trying to imply that all corporations are evil and will seek to harm workers to increase profit margins, these arbitration contracts will soon become industry standard and will allow less-than-honest employers to essentially ignore labor laws without fear of reprisal.

The only thing that can be done is to appeal to Congress.  While several democrat bills are being floated in an attempt to do away with exclusive arbitration agreements in most forms, they are unlikely to pass the current pro-business republican congress.

I’m not personally a fan of arbitration contracts, most commonly found in end-user licensing agreements.  They allow business to determine when, where, and by whom can see the case. Shell out $5,000 for software that is defective in Maine and all of the sudden you have to have the case heard in California by a certain group chosen by the company.  Is it even worth it? Generally not. Most businesses and people do not have the resources to retain a lawyer across the country, let alone suspend operation long enough to be in the courtroom.

To sum it up, this is a shitty ruling by a court that appears to be losing touch with the people.  The court is now mostly comprised of venerable justices that are quite simply geriatric and out of touch with modern devices and business.  While I praised them earlier this week, this ruling is disgustingly out of touch and undermines a struggling workforce.