Posted on 09/09/2015 6:44:59 PM PDT by markomalley
A National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge ruled that agreements signed by employees of Oklahoma-based arts and crafts company Hobby Lobby requiring them to submit to arbitration rather than go to court in work disputes are unenforceable.
The ruling by the government's labor enforcement agency, announced Wednesday, could potentially undermine a common practice used by employers to avoid litigation under federal labor laws.
"This is a dramatic decision," said David Rosenfeld, attorney for the Committee to Preserve the Religious Right to Organize, the group that brought the charges against Hobby Lobby. "If the board affirms it and the courts affirm it, it basically undermines this whole tendency of employers to implement these arbitration agreements [with their employees]."
Catherine Fisk, co-director of the University of California at Irvine's Center in Law, Society and Culture, agreed with Rosenfeld's assessment, calling the judge's decision "a very clever analysis" that could potentially apply to a wide variety of employment disputes.
"This argument could be made by any litigant in any court who wants to file a claim for failure to pay the minimum wage or whatever. When the employer moves to compel arbitration (rather than remain in court) this argument is available to anybody to say the arbitration agreement isn't enforceable," she said.
Agreements to waive rights in favor of arbitration are allowed under the Federal Arbitration Act, Fisk noted. What the judge's decision in effect said is that those arbitration agreements are only enforceable under the act if they are included as part of an employment contract. Otherwise, the agreements cannot be said to involve economic activity and therefore don't trigger the "interstate commerce" requirement for federal laws.
The arbitration agreements in the Hobby Lobby case specifically state they are not part an employment agreement, a provision intended to keep them outside of the scope of the federal employment laws such as the National Labor Relations Act. Essentially, the company wanted the workers to agree to arbitration in any employment dispute without saying the agreement also triggered the company's responsibilities under other federal employment laws. These types of arbitration agreements are widely used by many employers, Fisk argued.
The labor board judge said Hobby Lobby cannot have it both ways. "The [arbitration agreement] is worded very broadly, and explicitly states it applies to 'any dispute, demand, claim, controversy, cause of action, or suit ... that employee may have' at any time that 'in any way arises out of, involves, or relates to employee's employment' with the respondent. This would certainly encompass an unfair labor practice charge with the board," the judge said.
A spokesman for Hobby Lobby could not be reached for comment.
Hobby Lobby was at the heart of a controversial Supreme Court case last year involving whether a private company can be required under Obamacare to provide their female employees with health insurance that includes coverage that violates the owner's religious beliefs. The court ruled, 5-4, in favor of Hobby Lobby. Supporters of the decision argued it was an important affirmation of religious freedom. Critics argued it was wrong to expand those rights to for-profit companies.
So how do we cram this decision down the throats of liberals?
Yup, payback for Hobby Lobby beating the Obama Administration’s pet law, Obamacare in court specific to abortifacents. (SP?)
Obama is one vindictive son of a bitch.
Appeal it!
Every damn company in the nation has these arbitration clauses.
No, just a bitch
Obama is one vindictive son of a bitch.
And those who say "Well if you don't like the way that company is set up, then go apply to another" are living in some sort of dream world where good jobs grow on trees.
Hope it expands to eventually kill all arbitration clauses in contracts of adhesion.
If a contract has an arbitration clause, it’s clear evidence that the other party is planning on screwing you over.
My employment agreement includes one. I know, I had to exercise it in the last 30 days.
I'm torn on this one. On the one hand, this is so heavy-handed and un-friendly to business.
On the other hand, if my employer really f's me over, I'd have legal recourse to sue the sh*t out of them.
Which do I hate more? Government (Obama) or big corporate monoliths that treat human beings as disposable "resources?"
Tough question.
What an absurd observation.
The logical result of that line of thinking is--- the Soviet Union.
For generations, they had full employment; and totally shared misery.
Just saying
"A National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge ruled ..."
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
If I understand the issue correctly, regardless what FDR’s activist justices wanted everybody to think about scope of Congress’s Commerce Clause powers (1.8.3), a previous generation of state sovereignty-respecting justices had clarified that the states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specfic power to regulate intrastate commerce.
”State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress [emphases added].” —Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
And even if the states had constitutionally delegated such powers to feds, note that the Founding States had made the first numbered clauses in the Constitution, Sections 1-3 of Article I, evidently a good place to hide them from Congress, to clarify that all federal legislative powers are vested in the elected members of Congress, not in the executive or judicial branches, or in non-elected federal bureaucrats like those running the NLRB and the EPA. So Congress has a constitutional “monopoly” on federal legislative powers whether it wants it or not imo.
In fact, by delegating federal legislative / regulatory powers to nonelected bureaucrats, powers that the states have never delegated to Congress, Congress is wrongly protecting such powers from the wrath of the voters in blatant defiance of Sections 1-3 referenced above.
The bottom line is that this official action by the NLRB is another example where the corrupt, post-17th Amendment ratification Senate failed to protect the states and the people as the Founding States had intended for the Senate to do. In this case the Senate failed to kill bills which established the NLRB and appropriated funds to run the NLRB.
The ill-conceived 17th Amendment needs to disappear, and corrupt senators, and non-elected bureaucrats using government power to push their private agendas along with it.
Court date rolls around and as you're walking through the doors into the court room your lawyer says "I hope the judge is in a good mood, this case could go either way".
So the next time you go the arbitrator route. You go in the conference room, sit around the table for a few hours and at the end of the day ALL the attorneys (including yours) along with the arbitrator go to the bar for cocktails before they have dinner together...You aren't invited...but you are paying.
On your way home you remember the arbitrator is the judge, now retired, that you lost to the time you went the court route.
It's not a proposition that requires a choice of one or the other.
Big Government and Big Corporations are symbiotic partners with an invariable tendency towards oppression and domination of the population. Essentially, they are one and the same.
Arbitration "agreements" can only benefit the party that imposes them. They should be invalidated as a matter of public policy.
The libertarian notion that corporations can require anything of their employees, and that the employee need only go somewhere else if he doesn't like it is complete fantasy.
Putting reasonable limits on what corporations can compel their employees to agree with is not a slippery slope toward Soviet style communism.
Ironically, most of the people I know that are libertarian argue with the hiring managers and often get the company to waive the arbitration requirement.
It's not as simple as Free Market Yay! Or else COMMUNISM!
When it is initially described arbitration sounds fair and like a good alternative to expensive litigation.
But arbitration between parties of vastly unequal size is never fair. The arbitrator is paid by the parties. Sounds even handed, right -- actually very wrong. A large corporation will go to arbitration many, many times vs. once for an individual. If a particular arbitrator does not produce decisions the corporation likes, they will scratch him from their list of acceptable arbitrators, which could substantially reduce his income.
Arbitrators are "captured" by their repeat clients. It is an inherently unfair situation.
” And those who say “Well if you don’t like the way that company is set up, then go apply to another” are living in some sort of dream world where good jobs grow on trees. ”
This will ensure that there will be even fewer quality jobs (or any types of jobs), as companies escape to friendlier climes. Why don’t you start a company yourself and provide “quality” jobs in an environment where the government tells you how to run your business?
In a real recovery, good jobs would not be hard to find.
Punishment for frivolous suits, and limiting payouts works to cure a lot of bullshit in the legal system. These arbitration agreements are just in response to that, and of course, gub’mint diktats that result in a lot of butt-covering.
The ill-conceived 17th Amendment needs to disappear ...
That was one of the justifications for Senate Elections. Another was that in some states the governor was of one party while the legislature had majorities of the other party. When the Governor could not nominate any candidate that the legislature would approve, the state was left with NO Senators for years.
So the 17th solved some immediate problems while creating a larger hidden problem.
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