20 ms·
Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees
- mLuby 8y agoSounds like a stunning victory for (unorganized) labor—almost too good to believe! Does anyone with more details know if there are caveats or exemptions (other than the mentioned contractors)?
- ddxxdd 8y agoI don't know the details, but I do believe that high-skilled labor like Google employees likely have more bargaining power than your local pizza delivery driver. It wouldn't surprise me if we see these kinds of victories in other tech companies.
- mLuby 8y agoIf I were other companies, I'd be scrambling to prevent this from happening with my employees. Can't assume it'll spread without organized effort (hint, the U word).
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- rexpop 8y agoThese workers organized.
- ddxxdd 8y agoSomeone please explain to me the benefits of having forced arbitration at all; what's the benefit of having disputes (including sexual harassment disputes) resolved behind closed doors without any possibility of appeal?
- qaq 8y agoMoney
- mayneack 8y agoSeems like a clear benefit for the company if there's no backlash, right? Even if you expect the same outcomes, it's surely cheaper.
- CydeWeys 8y agoI believe arbitration is still optional. If you're an employee, there's no benefit whatsoever to forced arbitration.
- luckydata 8y agoOptional as long as you're ok not having a job. I have yet to sign a contract with any SV company that doesn't include forced arbitration.
- cma 8y agoHis point is if it is such a net win for everyone, then you can simply agree to it at the time the lawsuit is being put together. The forced clause where you pre-agree to it is because they know it isn't always a benefit to both parties. Corporations often push for the forced clause and employees almost never do.
- munificent 8y ago...this is literally what the article is about. It's saying Google is removing forced arbitration from its employment contract.
- luckydata 8y agoYeah I get it. I was trying to explain it to the commenter that missed that detail.
- mehrdadn 8y agoI could be wrong but I understood one of the problems is misaligned incentives. If the arbitrator is to be kept in business then it's tough for them to rule against businesses that bring cases to them consistently even if the case merits it, which disadvantages employees. In reality I've heard it indeed doesn't turn out fair.
- mLuby 8y agoMuch cheaper, faster, and more private for all parties, plus I believe it prevents class action lawsuits. And don't forget the possibility that the arbitrators (who are paid by the company) favor their benefactor… For example, you mention sexual harassment; the victim (and certainly the accused) might not want all those details in the public record.
- vertex-four 8y agoThe thing is, if the employer and the employee both wanted arbitration, neither would need to be forced into it - something along the lines of "arbitration is always available as an option with consent of all parties" written into the contract would be perfectly fine.
- mehrdadn 8y agoIt wouldn't even need to be in the contract would it? They'd just both agree at the time of the dispute.
- cma 8y agoIf it is such a huge benefit to everyone then both parties will simply always agree to it in the pre-lawsuit negotiation phase, and you don't need a preexisting agreement to mandate it. Corporations often insist on adding it to their employment contracts and employees almost never insist it be added to an employment contract that was missing it, so you can guess who it benefits.
- Spooky23 8y agoMany union contracts call for arbitration. The advantages in that scenario is that it is faster and more definitive. Usually unions and management have some sort of process to pick the arbitrator in a manner deemed acceptable. Advantages are speed, privacy and cost. You also avoid the political risk of the court district that you are in. In an individual vs company situation, it’s always better for the employer, unless the employee can hire the arbitrator. If the company hires the person, that arbitrator may find it difficult to get future work if they side with the company.
- Raphmedia 8y agoKeeps the company's public image clean.
- AdmiralAsshat 8y agoForced arbitration overwhelmingly favors the employer.
- stuart78 8y agoFrom the article: "Forced arbitration ensures workplace disputes are settled behind closed doors and without any right to an appeal. These types of agreements effectively prevent employees from suing companies." When employment contracts including a binding arbitration clause, the employee is agreeing to resolve conflicts privately with the company rather than through public means, such as a lawsuit. This reduces the public profile and resolution of such an action.
- pessimizer 8y agoImagine we have a civil dispute; you get your lawyer, I get my lawyer, we go to a judge, and the judge makes a decision. Forced arbitration is if instead when we had a civil dispute, we just went to my lawyer, and my lawyer made the decision.
- syn0byte 8y agoEmployees only win 21% of the time. Almost half as often as federal courts and over half in state courts. https://www.epi.org/publication/the-arbitration-epidemic/#epi-toc-13 https://www.epi.org/publication/the-arbitration-epidemic/#ep... Plus, private arbitration is private. The terrible things the companies do to employees don't end up on public records. You can't even tell how often they are being taken to inverse kangaroo court.
- Aunche 8y agoArbitration is also far cheaper than court. The average person filing a lawsuit is going to be much more confident than one going through arbitration, so of course, lawsuits end up being more successful.
- ChuckMcM 8y agoWow, you mean collective employee action can be used to force an employer to stop exploitative behaviors? Who knew? :-) I'm really glad to hear that Google made this step, now if they would drop the overly expansive ownership claim in their employment agreement and the right to surveillance on personal property it would be a much more employee friendly place. I also hope that it gives them an edge in hiring which would encourage other employers to follow suit in order to be competitive.
- m0zg 8y ago>> overly expansive ownership claim Yeah, that particular clause gave me a looong pause before signing their contract, in fact I even seriously considered taking one of the other offers I had. This is why you see all those "happens to be owned by Google" disclaimers on open source projects. This means the person wrote this code on their own time, yet it's owned by Google anyway, which IMO is total employee-hostile bullshit. I would not sign something like that contract today. At the time, though, the money differential and the allure of having Google on my resume outweighed the concerns. I have since discovered other companies can be a lot less possessive of the stuff I build on my own time and dime.
- dekhn 8y agoI agreed to that contract and open sourced many thousands of lines of code owned by Google, but still available to me and the rest of the world via github. I don't see the problem. If you could demonstrate your project didn't overlap google business then you could do your own project.
- m0zg 8y agoPeople seem to not quite get this, so I'll try to be as clear as I can. Google should not have the ability to claim ownership on unrelated work that does not use company time or resources unless _I_ _voluntarily_ relinquish such ownership. Google should have no business whatsoever interfering with what I do on my own personal time. Nor should I have to make anything open source. Nor should I need to ask anyone's _permission_ to utilize my own time as I see fit. You can get these terms with other companies, if you ask for them. The only exception I think is reasonable is if my project discloses Google proprietary information in any way, or directly competes with Google, in which case Google should be able to terminate my employment. This would be fair. What Google is doing now is slimy AF.
- riffraff 8y agoWhy isn't forced arbitration illegal? You're effectively agreeing to renounce to your rights to sue a company. Seems odd that US laws allows that. Or, is the clause only that arbitration has to be attempted but not binding to the fact that an agreement may be reached? This case would seem far less evil.
- anth_anm 8y agobecause of shitty court rulings that make them legal. They also can't be banned at the state level.
- nimish 8y agoThe Federal Arbitration Act, and a SCOTUS favorable to corporate interests.
- dvtrn 8y agoWhy isn't forced arbitration illegal? We're getting there: https://www.fisherphillips.com/resources-alerts-kentucky-becomes-first-state-to-prohibit-mandatory https://www.fisherphillips.com/resources-alerts-kentucky-bec... States still hold a lot of chips when it comes to rulemaking over what is and isn't allowed w/rt employment types and agreements. It's a bit murky though, when it comes to Federal power weighing in on employment contracts at the state level (outside of things you've come to expect like protected classes/EEOC, workplace safety, and accomodations/accessibility for workers with physical impairments).
- 8y ago
- docker_up 8y agoI would be perfectly fine with forced arbitration that was perfectly fair and not skewed towards the employer. The problem with forced arbitration is that it's completely skewed towards the employers. Being able to have a fairly arbitrated conflict that was inexpensive and had looser rules than a formal lawsuit would be a benefit to all. Look at how small claims court is so much more efficient and fair than a regular lawsuit.
- deogeo 8y agoI'd much rather expand the domain of small claims court, than create a parallel, privately-owned legal system. Even if it started out perfectly fair.
- Spooky23 8y agoThere’s no scenario where a legal proceeding between employee and a large company is fair. The main advantage of court is the ability to appeal and the public nature of the proceedings. The only fair fight is if you have a competent union. That comes with its own problems.
- drdeca 8y agoWhat if, instead of aiming at “fair”, we instead aim at “Just”? Edit: if there is a difference, that is. If there isn’t, then nvm.
- JohnFen 8y agoYes, at the heart of it, this is the problem. As an employee, an arbitration clause realistically means that the only recourse you have is through what amounts to a kangaroo court run for the benefit of the employer.
- 40acres 8y agoThis has low key been a big year for labor in tech. First we have Amazon backing out of NYC partly due to political pressure from the unions and wins like this vs. Google. Full blown unionization may never happen but the forces of labor are definitely starting to affect tech giants.
- Eridrus 8y agoI don't think the unions actually had much to do with Amazon pulling out. Some unions were actually for it either because they were involved in the construction plans or thought it would give them leverage if Amazon was more firmly rooted there.
- hoffs 8y agoThe amazon thing was affected by unions the least, the lacking support from authorities and uncertainty about subsidies/grants was major reason.
- vanderZwan 8y ago> This has low key been a big year for labor in tech. Honestly, I am having my suspicions whether or not that "low key" aspect isn't artificially maintained by the media somewhow. I had heard about the scandals and such last year, but somehow I missed: > Following the massive, 20,000-person walkout at Google in November, Google got rid of forced arbitration for sexual harassment and sexual assault claims, offering more transparency around those investigations and more. And I would say that 20,000 people walking out on Google should have been hard to miss.
- gipp 8y agoIndeed, it was hard to miss. There was tons of coverage.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- srkmno 8y agoWhatever your thoughts about arbitration there is no denying that it's the quicker and cheaper method, what this unfortunate development accomplishes is enlarging the pool of well to do clients and plaintiffs for the lawyers to exploit. In a related note: organized labor almost killed the US car industry, when economical foreign cars got popular, domestic car companies couldn't quickly make the necessary adjustments to compete with the foreign product largely because of the inertia of union agreements. Labor unions are adversarial to change and innovation and especially in this era there is no place for them and hopefully automation will eradicate them completely, it's disheartening that many HN commenters would support such antiquated and inefficient agreements.
- jdmichal 8y agoThis is removing forced arbitration. Parties can still agree to settle a case via arbitration. But now it will actually be an agreement between the two parties for a particular case, as opposed to a blanket contractual obligation with unbalanced power dynamics.
- JohnFen 8y ago> there is no denying that it's the quicker and cheaper method I don't think anyone is disputing that. The problem is that "cheaper" and "faster" comes with the cost of injustice. > Labor unions are adversarial to change and innovation and especially in this era there is no place for them Why not? What replaces them? The entire point of unions is to try to correct the serious power imbalance between employer and employee, an imbalance that historically (and currently) has been eagerly leveraged against employees. What sort of protection against this would you recommend? Much stricter regulation?
- srkmno 8y ago1. I can't take seriously someone who writes "the cost of injustice" in this context. 2. When unions muddle the machinations of corporate management and production ultimately shutting the whole thing down surely they will be happy about the power balance they achieved. In a free market an employee's own abilities and the dynamism of the economy determines their value. So the trick is to invest in one's education and coming up with policies that keep the economy chugging at a healthy pace, labor unions is not such a policy.
- JohnFen 8y agoThat's a great start. Now if only everyone else would do the same.
- intopieces 8y agoBinding arbitration is a good way to limit liability and bad PR; take it away, and the company will be looking for something else to de-risk them. I expect the outcome will be more contractors, since those companies that employ the contractors do not have to abide by this.
- martin1975 8y agoan opportune time to unionize, if you ask me...
- iceninenines 8y agoYes, in states without "right to work" (for less) and other union-busting laws. More importantly would be for workers to quit en masse and start their own employee-owned co-op so they're not cheated out of profits they helped create but rarely see.
- googernettles 8y agoI can tell you with a high level of confidence that this is a Google PR stunt. Google executives conjured up a protest to force their hand acting against the interests of the board of directors and shareholders. Without a forced hand, executives would have been sued by shareholders for breaching fiduciary duties and terminated from their positions. The former executives would also forfeit their compensation packages because of acting so "unreasonably". Executives wanted to end forced arbitration because it was unethical. They agreed that compelled arbitration was wrong. At the same time, no one was justifiably willing to give up a hard-earned career of a lifetime. Capitalism is not gentle to those who defy it. This protest reads like a Pepsi commercial. They should win an Oscar this Sunday.
- nullc 8y agoThis post was flagged. I thought it was interesting and civilly stated. It may well be baseless or untrue but I think the readers can take it for whatever its worth to them. If this change were 'orchestrated' to push through an ethical change that otherwise would have been hard to sell then I think that would also have been a laudable act just as well. Executives are also employees and should be free to collaborate with their colleagues for the benefit of all employees.
- gipp 8y agoI don't see how the theory outlined in your post makes it a "PR stunt". You're just saying they wanted to do the right thing but needed political cover to be able to get it done. If anything that makes them look better.
- Animats 8y agoIt may also be because forced arbitration backfired on Google when they went after Anthony Levandowski. They claimed he took Waymo's trade secrets and went to Uber. But they can't sue him. They can only go to arbitration. And that's over and settled. They can only sue Uber.
- trumped 8y agoin the end, that's probably a bad thing because Google might get better employees
- LeicaLatte 8y agoVery encouraging.
- crb002 8y agoCurious if any company offers a bonus for voluntary arbitration agreements? Pay out 1/2 their insurance costs saved. Fully market solution where everyone is acting of free will.
- glenrivard 8y agoGreat to see Google leading the way on this. But now can we get Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and the others to follow? "Dozens of groups, including the ACLU, NAACP, and the Economic Policy Institute, wrote letters to some of America’s largest tech companies on Friday, demanding that they free their employees from forced arbitration. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Uber were among the companies whose CEOs received the letters." https://gizmodo.com/aclu-naacp-and-dozens-of-other-groups-call-out-tech-g-1829234537 https://gizmodo.com/aclu-naacp-and-dozens-of-other-groups-ca...
- stefek99 8y agoHahahahaha :) Imbalance when signing an employment agreement. Of course, you want to have a job so you agree to things that are not in your favor LOL.
- boycottgoogle 8y agoGoogle is no longer what it used to be it's doing evil