Article contents
Privatizing Employment Law: The Expansion of Mandatory Arbitration in the Workplace
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2020
Abstract
This article examines the institutional, political, and legal development of employment arbitration as it shifted from a Progressive Era form of justice enhancement to one co-opted by business-friendly conservatives arguably more concerned with protecting employers from litigation. While arbitration has a long history in the United States, the expanding use of mandatory, employer-promulgated arbitration clauses has more than doubled since the 2000s. In examining the nature of the shift, this article argues that it occurred through a gradual process of conversion in three institutional realms (1) legislative conversion, (2) private-sector conversion of public regulation, and (3) judicial conversion. Facilitated by a growing divide among Democrats on the value of arbitration, conservatives began to promote it in the 1970s and 1980s as backlash to the expansion of statutory employment rights. I argue that they did so by converting the institutional infrastructures of labor and commercial arbitration, a process continued by the private sector and Supreme Court. As such, this article argues that conversion is the product of multiple actors targeting multiple institutions, over decades, and with consequences for both the literature on institutional change and conceptions of equality under the law.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press
Footnotes
Acknowledgments: The author thanks William Gould and the participants of the 2019 conference on Law and Work sponsored by the Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University,Philip Rocco and the panelists of “Dynamics of Policy Change” at the 2019 meeting of the Western Political Science Association, and Margaret Weir and the participants of the 2019 Toronto Political Development Workshop for their extremely helpful feedback. Thanks also go to SAPD's anonymous reviewers for their indispensable feedback and Christian Potter for his excellent research assistance.
References
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169. “Recission of Mandatory Binding Arbitration of Employment Discrimination Disputes as a Condition of Employment,” U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, December 16, 2019, https://www.eeoc.gov/wysk/recission-mandatory-binding-arbitration-employment-discrimination-disputes-condition
170. Comsti, “A Metamorphosis,” 19.
171. See Zack, Arnold M., “Agreements to Arbitrate and the Waiver of Rights under Employment Law,” in Employment Dispute Resolution and Worker Rights in the Changing Workplace, ed. Eaton, Adrienne E. and Keefe, Jeffrey H. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 67–94Google Scholar.
172. For an extended discussion of the treatment of corporations by courts, see Adler, Jonathan H., ed., Business and the Roberts Court (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Winkler, Adam, We the Corporations: How American Business Won Their Civil Rights (New York: Liveright, 2018)Google Scholar.
173. It is important to note that the Court has also altered relevant aspects of contract law in order to accomplish these ends. These changes are more relevant to the law of commercial and consumer arbitration, but some—like doctrines governing “contracts of adhesion,” for example—apply to contracts of employment as well.
174. For a larger discussion of the conservative turn of law in the workplace, see Lee, The Workplace Constitution.
175. See, e.g., Resnik, “Diffusing Disputes.”
176. 9 U.S.C. § 2 (2012).
177. Gross, “Justice Scalia's Hat Trick,” 123.
178. See EEOC v. Waffle House, Inc., 534 U.S. 279 (2002), Thomas dissenting.
179. 460 U.S. 1 (1983).
180. 465 U.S. 1 (1984).
181. 473 U.S. 614 (1985).
182. Ibid., 628.
183. See, e.g., Bales, Richard A., Compulsory Arbitration: The Grand Experiment in Employment (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
184. Ibid., 628.
185. 415 U.S. 36 (1974).
186. 450 U.S. 728 (1981).
187. Ibid., 950.
188. The Court also addressed this in another case in 1981 (McDonald v. City of West Branch, 466 U.S. 728), holding that a labor arbitrator's decision could not restrict an employee from litigating a wrongful discharge claim.
189. Green, Michael Z., “Retaliatory Employment Arbitration,” Berkeley Journal of Employment & Labor Law 35, no. 1–2 (1994): 206–207Google Scholar.
190. 556 U.S. 247 (2009).
191. Brief for the United States as Amicus Curiae Supporting Respondents, No. 07-581, 9.
192. Comsti, “A Metamorphosis,” 13.
193. 561 U.S. 63 (2010).
194. 569 U.S. 564 (2013).
195. Horton and Chandrasekher, “After the Revolution,” 67–68.
196. Brief of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America as Amicus Curiae Supporting Petitioner.
197. Horton and Chandrasekher, “After the Revolution,” 70–71.
198. 563 U.S. 533 (2011).
199. 565 U.S. 95 (2012).
200. 570 U.S. 228 (2013).
201. Concepcion, 9.
202. 15 U.S.C. § 1679c— Disclosures.
203. Italian Colors, 1.
204. Gross, “Justice Scalia's Hat Trick,” 132.
205. 586 U.S. (2019).
206. Henry Schein, Inc. v. Archer and White Sales, Inc., 586 U.S. (2019).
207. 586 U.S. (2019).
208. Ian Millhiser, “DoorDash's Anti-Worker Tactics Just Backfired Spectacularly,” Vox, February 12, 2020, https://www.vox.com/2020/2/12/21133486/doordash-workers-10-million-forced-arbitration-class-action-supreme-court-backfired.
209. Terrell Abernathy, et al., v. DoorDash Inc., United States District Court, Northern District of California, No. C 19-07545 WHA.
210. Ibid., 7.
211. Ibid., 8.
212. Democrats in Congress have proposed some version of an “Arbitration Fairness Act” in almost every session since 2001, to no avail.
213. For example, New York has enacted one bill and has two more currently in committee, all of which prohibit mandatory arbitration provisions in contracts relating to allegations of sexual harassment. South Carolina is currently considering the “Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Harassment Act of 2018,” that provides “no predispute arbitration agreement is valid or enforceable if it requires arbitration of a sex discrimination dispute.”
214. For example, see Rachel Deutsch, Rey Fuentes, and Tia Koonse, “California's Hero Labor Law: The Private Attorneys General Act Fights Wage Theft and Recovers Millions for Lawbreaking Corporations,” Center for Popular Democracy, February 2020, https://populardemocracy.org/sites/default/files/PAGA%20Report_WEB.pdf.
215. Sejal Singh and Andre Manuel, “Harvard Law Students Are Taking on Forced Arbitration,” The Nation, April 15, 2019.
216. S. 610, 116th Congress, 1st Sess., introduced February 28, 2019. Democrats in the House have also introduced a bill that would end forced arbitration of sexual harassment claims (H.E. 1443) and one that would end forced arbitration for victims of data breaches (H.R. 327).
217. Winkler discusses this agenda at length in We the Corporations.
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