Greene & O'Brien Deliver Requiem for Workers' Class Actions

Stephanie Greene and Christine O'Brien (both Boston College-Management) have just posted on SSRN their article (forthcoming Stanford J. Civil Rights & Civil Liberties) Epic Backslide: The Supreme Court Endorses Mandatory Individual Arbitration Agreements, #Timesup on Workers' Rights. Here's the abstract:

The United States Supreme Court dealt a serious blow to workers’ rights in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 584 U.S. __(May 21, 2018) when it held that employers may require employees to waive their rights to class or collective action. Employees had hoped the Court would find that mandatory individual arbitration provisions are illegal because Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act guarantees employees the right to engage in concerted activities for mutual aid or protection. The Court, however, held that the Federal Arbitration Act requires arbitration provisions to be enforced as written. While the three cases before the Court involved wage and hour claims, the Court’s Epic decision impacts many other types of employment disputes that are diverted from courts to individual arbitration – including sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination in the workplace. In the era of #MeToo, some employers may choose to exempt sexual harassment claims from these mandatory private arbitration agreements due to public pressure to do the right thing. Nonetheless, mandatory arbitration provisions cover at least 60 million U.S. workers, and those requiring individual arbitration keep labor and employment claims hidden, and foreclose assertion of rights and achievement of appropriate remedies. This paper discusses the Court’s decision in Epic Systems, what worker rights remain after the decision, and what steps employee advocates and Congress might take to remedy the negative impact of the Court’s decision on workers’ right to act collectively.

I can't bear to write on employment arbitration any more -- theSCOTUS cases are just so bad on both policy and statutory-interpretation grounds. I'm glad others like Stephanie & Christine are fighting the good fight.

rb