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What Happens When You Try to Sue Your Boss
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- fzeroracer 8y agoArbitration agreements are a massive, massive scam and the fact that they can be forced as part of your employment contract needs to go. It allows companies to sweep away shitty corporate behavior and avoid addressing the actual issues with their workplace in addition to overwhelmingly tilting the system against employees.
- windexh8er 8y agoMy rule of thumb is if I can't opt out of arbitration then I can't work for you. Most established orgs give you a grace period after start date to request opt-out to legal and I've run into no flack for doing just that. However I've learned from experience that it is critical to not be bound by it - especially if your pay is tied to a metric or a quota and/or a portion of your package is options/RSUs.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- lsc 8y agoso... serious question, and I'm asking you, 'cause it sounds like you are implying that you've sued your employer. is suing your employer a seriously career-impairing move? I mean, I think most court proceedings are public records, and it seems like if the fact that you sued your last employer for something came up in your background check, I personally assume that'd be as bad or worse than an old felony conviction, from the employer's perspective. Are people who sued their employer a protected class in the USA, or is there some other reason why this isn't a career-ending event?
- gcb0 8y agoit probably won't impact you.
- lsc 8y agowell, yes. For a lot of reasons, I'm not likely to sue my employer. But, that doesn't mean I'm not curious.
- windexh8er 8y agoI didn't imply I sued them. Keep in mind that suing someone has the implication of going public. You don't need to sue someone to be bound by arbitration. Generally legal conversations can and will happen prior to the event of suing your employer. This is something most people would gloss over or not consider. If you sign arbitration you have no wiggle room - because it is all up to the company, and they likely view arbitration as in their best interest. But if you have opted out you can go get your own attorney and present your claim without getting into a public legal battle. If you hold the cards it is in their best interest to negotiate, settle and not get sued (as that becomes public and is bad for both sides). Generally when making legal agreements the "career ending events" are protected as part of the settlement. It would be amiss to forget to CYA in your negotiation. This may include language that explicitly states anyone from that company talking about your externally. Obviously they're incented to keep that bargain or you can then go down the path of defamation and further liabilities.
- sjg007 8y agoThis is why you unionize.
- Apocryphon 8y agoSeriously. I wonder what alternative solution that union skeptics have to offer for this problem.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- vkou 8y agoThey'll tell you that nobody's forcing you to work for a company that requires you to undergo forced arbitration. I tell them that nobody's forcing them to work for a union shop.
- scarejunba 8y agoYes, I'm certainly not against a union-optional situation. If specific companies want to be union-only, that's fine by me. I'll go work elsewhere. If those companies can change their minds and admit scabs, that's okay by me. If a bunch of people want to group together to bargain, that's their right. I've gotten together with my co-workers and spoken to bosses before. The only problem is when state regulation is used to enforce this. I'm not okay with that.
- hoaw 8y agoIt can't be a right if it isn't regulated. Unionizing is a legally recognized international right. It isn't really optional. Then of course you can argue how it should work, but that is largely a different matter. You want to waive that right that's fine, but it is just that. Anyone else who wants to keep their right should get to.
- eeZah7Ux 8y agoI get what you mean but the "nobody's forcing you" arguments are all fallacious. Life it's not a dichotomy between forced and free.
- paxy 8y agoArbitration contracts need to be illegal, period.
- electricwater 8y agoI think they should be legal but both parties need to agree to it after a lawsuit is filed. The courts may approve or deny this request on the basis of public policy. I wonder if a political party (Democrats) will take it up on them to restrict the ability of forced arbitrations between an employer and employee. I think it is just a question of time before someone like @AOC starts talking about it.
- lostdog 8y agoThe CFPB tried to make a rule preventing forced arbitration in financial services agreements. You will be unsurprised to hear that Republicans in Congress struck that rule down.
- gleenn 8y agoIt's really sad corporate America owns workers, forced arbitration is such a handout. Now UBS gets to ax anybody they want a day before their bonuses are due and even if they go through with arbitration they've done the math and saved 50%.
- MaupitiBlue 8y agoArbitration isn’t necessarily bad for workers. Arbitrators tend to split the baby. So, if you have a weak case, you may come out ahead.
- TomMckenny 8y agoEmployees only win some 20% of arbitration cases. It seems incredibly unlikely that 80% of cases are employees going through all this outlandish effort just for bogus claims. And if 20% is considered splitting the baby, I tremble to imagine what part the employee ends up with.
- fundingshovel 8y ago20% is far better than 1% https://www.fastcompany.com/40440310/employees-win-very-few-civil-rights-lawsuits https://www.fastcompany.com/40440310/employees-win-very-few-...
- TheCoelacanth 8y ago1. That is only "civil rights lawsuits", probably one of the hardest kinds of cases to win. 2. You left out the 78% "likely settlement" category. Many of those are victories for the employee, just not the maximum possible victory.
- Aqua 8y agoIt's absurd that you can actually waive any of your legal rights... Seriously, this is bonkers. After the #MeToo movement revealed that forced arbitration has been used to keep sexual harassment complaints quiet, a handful of companies, including Google and Facebook Inc., agreed to get rid of it for harassment claims Wow, how noble of them. How about getting rid of all of that BS?
- cryptonector 8y agoWaiving your right to first go to court seems reasonable enough provided you cannot waive the right to appeal arbitration in court.
- vageli 8y agoHow can you appeal the arbitration in court? Pretty sure you agree (when signing away your rights) that you will hold the arbitration result to be binding and you give up any potential court remedy. IANAL though.
- gpm 8y agoI believe they were talking about an alternate world where arbitration decisions would be appealable, not the world we live in.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 8y agoAre you sure? https://law.freeadvice.com/litigation/appeals/arbitration_appeals.htm https://law.freeadvice.com/litigation/appeals/arbitration_ap... Granted, the appeals are unlikely to succeed, but perhaps that is because arbitration typically has an approximately fair outcome? Appeals of typical court cases aren't likely to succeed either, but we don't say that court is therefore unfair.
- jjoonathan 8y agoYes, I'm sure, because I read your link, which says that you can't appeal the facts of the case or the merits of the decision, you can only appeal the process, which, in its own words, provides "a high standard of deference to the arbitrator."
- jedberg 8y agoOk, so the reason we have arbitration at all is to save the courts time. This makes sense. This seems like such an easy problem to solve too. Just don't let the company or the worker pick the arbitrator. Require by law that the arbitrator be picked by a judge, or be randomly assigned by the court system, who has presumably vetted the arbitrator. The main problem with these things is that the arbitrator is picked by the company, so they have a strong incentive to favor the company. Arbitration wouldn't be so bad if the inherent bias is removed.
- dcosson 8y agoAren't there already systems in place within the legal system to allow this? Like small claims court or appealing a parking ticket, where you present the case to one judge and they decide rather than holding a full trial before a jury. I don't see why relying on one arbiter saves any more time than relying on one judge. Is it that the arbiter would be less qualified/lower paid than a judge?
- jedberg 8y agoIt's basically small claims court except with possibly less qualified people and for larger amounts of money. Small claims is like that specifically because it is a small amount of money.
- alistairSH 8y agoSmall claims is capped at very small values. $5000 in VA. $5000 (corporation) or $10000 (individual) in CA. Too low for sexual harassment or other career-impacting transgressions by an employer.
- maxlybbert 8y agoTo be legal, arbitration must be fair and protect the legal rights of both parties (although enforcing that requirement is obviously difficult). But arbitration doesn’t have to be as formal as a regular court, and that informality is supposed to save a lot of money, so US law actually prefers arbitration when it’s an option.
- 8y ago
- tjpnz 8y agoWhat would happen if you hired a lawyer and sued anyway? People agree to things all the time that wouldn't hold up in court.
- jjoonathan 8y agoBut arbitration does, that's the problem.
- InfamousRece 8y agoThe other party would then file Motion to Compel Arbitration. This will usually result in the dismissal of the lawsuit.
- unreal37 8y agoYou'd pretty much be spending money with no hope of even getting your issues discussed. And possibly having to pay the legal fees of your boss for the hassle.
- URSpider94 8y agoYou maybe missed the point where the Supreme Court ruled that binding arbitration clauses are enforceable.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- narrator 8y agoJust to put a word in for the other side. A friend of mine had some startup that had a huge contract for its product. One of the employees got let go and filed an employment suit. The lawyer he got was somewhat unethical and basically buried the company in legal fees. They went out of business before they could fulfill the big contract and tried to settle many times with the employee, but the lawyer kept egging him on and nobody got any money in the end except the lawyer. The end.
- rectang 8y agoBurying the opposition in legal fees is only available to parties with the financial resources to keep their lawyers going. The vast majority of the time, it is companies employing this stratagem, not individuals.
- narrator 8y agoIt's different when it's a bootstrapped startup though.
- gcb0 8y agoso, because in this one time the company was as vulnerable as the person, the law is.... what? I can't even guess where you were going with your point!
- renholder 8y agoI'm guessing that it was: Corporations are people too? Otherwise, likewise, I can't fathom what the point of the anecdote was. If the company was truly in the wrong, then it going out of business isn't - necessarily - a bad thing. It sucks for the employed by it, yes, but - in the overall scheme - perhaps it was for the best? Either way, there's - clearly - not enough information for this to be worthwhile.
- devereaux 8y agoHow can the lawyer of one party cause legal fees to the other party? I genuinely do not understand, as each party is responsible for its own costs
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- wiradikusuma 8y ago"(the) firm Proskauer Rose LLP who specializes in defending finance companies" — I wonder what would happen if _their_own_ employees sue them, it would be hilarious. Also: Apparently, I can't select the text to copy/paste—and I've tried disabling JavaScript. I wonder what's the reason for this?
- sdrothrock 8y agoI can select fine even with javascript enabled -- the issue seems to be that the highlight is nearly invisible.
- LiquidFlux 8y agoThere exists a CSS property to disable highlighting, user-select: none; I believe, but in this case ( with JS enabled ) the highlight colour is simply not WCAG AA2 compliant and is nearly the same colour as the background See the paragraph starting "After Chinn's rebuttal..." - https://i.imgur.com/M02ob3O.png https://i.imgur.com/M02ob3O.png
- mruts 8y agoWhy can’t judicial systems just get more funding? Surely they aren’t that expensive? You just have to rent the space, and pay the employees (all of which probably don’t make that much money). Surely some money from the military could pay for that?
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> pay the employees (all of which probably don’t make that much money). Court are packed with lawyers. The only thing buttressing against the sky-high compensation a good lawyer can make in the private sector is the political opportunity clerking and working in a court can open up. These aren't people one goes cheap on.
- behringer 8y agoYou collect more fees with the more hearings you host. It would be trivial to increase the size of the justice system. However, the system as it stands now is ideal for huge trillion dollar companies.
- mruts 8y agoAccording to google, public prosecutors make a median salary of $81,000. So maybe like two-thirds as much as an average software engineer? Doesn't sound that expensive. Also, they get to cash in after working in the public sector for awhile, so in essence they get deferred comp from the private sector.
- exabrial 8y agoPhysical access: game over
- tluyben2 8y agoNot sure why people sign contracts like that; never sign non competes or this kind of thing. Never did never will. But then again, I am not in the US, maybe it is that different.
- gboudrias 8y agoI'm fairly against arbitration and I'm fairly certain it's much more limited here in Canada. In this particular story, what strikes me is the amounts being discussed. 1 million dollars isn't chump change to anyone. If we have to have arbitration, there should be a hard legal limit on how much they can arbitrate when a physical person is involved. Also it should be limited to financial matters, forcing any other matter (discrimination etc) to be settled privately seems... wrong.
- renholder 8y ago>In this particular story, what strikes me is the amounts being discussed. 1 million dollars isn't chump change to anyone. If we have to have arbitration, there should be a hard legal limit on how much they can arbitrate when a physical person is involved. Two points: 1. 1 Million is chump change to UBS. 2. It was class-action. More parties = More money. He wasn't in it just for himself.
- User23 8y agoCan a lawyer here explain how these arbitration clauses aren't unconscionable?
- URSpider94 8y agoNot a lawyer, but the Supreme Court has ruled that they are Constitutional, and that’s pretty much that.
- clhodapp 8y agoThe Supreme Court isn't an unquestionable authority on what is right. They are our pragmatic system of determining what our laws (including the constitution) actually mean in a given context. Sometimes they do great at that. Sometimes they do terribly. We don't all agree on which is which! Even when they rule on something (rightly or wrongly), the law can be changed afterward to undo the effects of their ruling (even the constitution). In this case, many (including me) would argue that that was a terrible ruling and that laws should be passed to clarify that you can't sign away your right to a trial preemptively.
- rlpb 8y agoThat doesn't mean it's automatically how things should be. The Supreme Court doesn't rule on that. If the Supreme Court was the only measure of "correctness", then the US might as well wipe its statute book clean. Another way of looking at it is that the Supreme Court has only ruled that they aren't _un_constitutional. It's then up to Congress to decide whether or not they should be illegal. I read elsewhere on this page that apparently the Republicans blocked such things from becoming illegal. In my view as a non-American, it feels like Americans attribute too much weight on things they don't like on the Supreme Court, which deflects from the reality that it is the major political parties (perhaps just one) supporting this status quo.
- hvs 8y agoThey ruled that they are "constitutional" not that they are "conscionable".
- Traubenfuchs 8y agoI have very little sympathy and connection with people who forfeit a 500k bonus to fight for a million instead, knowing they gonna have a hard time doing so. They should have portrayed someone from the nurses they mentioned instead. Small amounts or problems someones life depends on make for a dramatic story, a rich guy and his fight for hundred thousands of extra compensation make me scoff.
- C1sc0cat 8y agoIf they do it to a rich person what do you think happens to the average worker. ie me and you You cant in any sane country have a legal system that has one rule for "cute" nurses or any other group that the tabloids moon over and one for the average person.
- onetimemanytime 8y agoArbitration is perfectly reasonable. I can imagine in the old days (even now in some regions) the elders would gather to settle /judge disputes so they'd be no fights, killings and so on. But today, the fact that companies, with a lot more lawyer money than individual employees, push that, shows all we need to know.
- piokoch 8y agoI didn't know that it is legal to force someone to resign from being able to go to the court. I thought that right to use court to defend ones right is a right that cannot be revoked by some agreement. For me it looks as if someone would sign an agreement that company might kill employee if sales target is not met or enslave him and his family.
- mig_ 8y agoWith arbitration, for the company, worst case the company pays the original amount. In the court, worst case is the company pays the original amount + the clients lawyer fees.
- mig_ 8y agoWith arbitration, for the company, worst case the company pays the original amount. Without arbitration, in the court, worst case is the company pays the original amount + the clients lawyer fees.
- mwexler 8y agoWhile we are all bemoaning this for employment, note that in the US, in many cases, you've also given up your right to court for your credit card disagreements, disagreements with your insurance company, and disagreements with most major service providers where you had to sign a contract (though many telcos still provide an out for Small Claims court). This is not just an employment thing, this is individual vs. group power dynamics across many aspects of commerce. As consumers or creators, if we provide work to a group (employment) or pay a group for service (a contract), that group is often working to push us into arbitration instead of allowing the courts to decide. It's all very disappointing.
- ukyrgf 8y agoFive top-to-bottom scrolls on my mouse just to get to the first line of the article.