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Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

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Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#61

Post by hath995 »

briandear wrote: post #36
riffraff wrote: post #19

Why 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.

> You're effectively agreeing.. You are agreeing. As an adult, the choice to agree or not agree to conditions of a private transaction seem to be a fundamental liberty. If people didn’t agree and it affected recruitment, then companies would respond accordingly. Also, without arbitration, conceivably that could result in a lower offered salary to offset the risk of litigation. Given that the vast majority of employee…

For another data point consider https://www.reuters.com/article/legal-us-otc-uber/forced-int...

Even if you willingly accept the forced arbitration clause you still may not get justice because the company doesn't want to pay for it!

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#62

Post by JohnFen »

m0zg wrote: post #27
ChuckMcM wrote: post #10

Wow, 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 wou…

>> 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 bu…

> I would not sign something like that contract today.

I've been seeing wording to that effect in nearly every contract I've been presented with for years now. Every time, I speak up and suggest replacing it with wording that is much more restrictive (they can own anything I make using their resources or intellectual property, otherwise I own it).

I have yet to have a company not agree to this change.

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#63

Post by jahn716 »

defen wrote: post #49
ChuckMcM wrote: post #10

Wow, 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 wou…

> the right to surveillance on personal property Wait, what? I don't think I've seen that before, what does this mean exactly?

I had the exact same reaction. Shouldn't this worry the employees the most?

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#64

Post by fuzz4lyfe »

riffraff wrote: post #19

Why 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.

Mostly because people don't care enough.

Lets say you are a stanch Democrat, a Republican candidate runs with Republican policies plus a plan to end forced arbitration. Do you vote for him? For most voters the answer appears to be no.

Small government conservatives vote for large government projects that benefit their donors and friends, on the other side a lot of talk about the minimum wage and socialized healthcare but none if it ever materializes when they have a majority. Then the next election comes and you vote for the same people who failed you the first time, because the other people are trying to kill toddlers and force schoolchildren to become transgender or are all secretly racists out to build death camps for gay people or some other insane claim fed to you by a corporate news network or comedy show that happens to be owned by someone who benefits from the status quo. Don't worry though, keep drinking Pepsi, you are part of the resistance TM brought to you by Viacom.

Why doesn't anything ever get fixed? We keep putting the people who failed back in charge. Nobody in Congress today should have a seat in the next election until something actually changes.

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#65

Post by deogeo »

briandear wrote: post #36
riffraff wrote: post #19

Why 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.

> You're effectively agreeing.. You are agreeing. As an adult, the choice to agree or not agree to conditions of a private transaction seem to be a fundamental liberty. If people didn’t agree and it affected recruitment, then companies would respond accordingly. Also, without arbitration, conceivably that could result in a lower offered salary to offset the risk of litigation. Given that the vast majority of employee…

> the choice to agree or not agree to conditions of a private transaction seem to be a fundamental liberty.

A fundamental liberty that eventually leads to all corporations offering you the same choice. Accept it, or go bankrupt and homeless. Or were you able to negotiate terms with you bank, ISP, smartphone vendor, or Microsoft if you're on windows?

Laws restricting which contracts are legal, are just a form of collective bargaining of the voters. Or if you prefer, laws specifying which contracts will be enforced by the State. You're free to try and enforce the rest on your own, like a true libertarian.

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#66

Post by Datenstrom »

everdev wrote: post #47
m0zg wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 bu…

> "happens to be owned by Google" disclaimers on open source projects Not sure I've seen this before, do you have examples?

Don't have one on hand but I have seen quite a few. I have heard that they are mostly 20% time projects though I'm not sure if they try to take code written on your own time but it looks like they do (and anything else you have written before working there) from this:

https://opensource.google.com/docs/iarc/

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#67

Post by Retric »

ergothus wrote: post #34
ChuckMcM wrote: post #10

Wow, 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 wou…

> collective employee action can be used to force an employer to stop exploitative behaviors? I'm all for balancing the employer employee interaction, but is this truly something that works for most industries? Google cares about it's reputation among potential tech employees. Other areas (say, Amazon warehouses) probably have a lot less trouble finding people desperate for work and willing to put up with crap becaus…

Reputation has a lot of hidden costs. Simply having a smaller pool of applicants means they need to either pay more or accept what they consider worse employees. Similarly, high turnover means the loss of skills and the inability to underpay highly valued workers.

Both of these directly impact the bottom line and in competitive markets can and has killed companies.

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#68

Post by JohnFen »

Symmetry wrote: post #38
riffraff wrote: post #19

Why 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.

Averaged across distinct contracts (as opposed to contract-instances) forced arbitration is a very good thing. If Google and Microsoft get into a dispute about the meaning of some agreement they signed they it's far better that they get some third party to quickly resolve the issue than that they have to spend years and millions of dollars in legal fees fighting it out in the courts. It's only when these agreements a…

> Averaged across distinct contracts (as opposed to contract-instances) forced arbitration is a very good thing.

Forced arbitration is a very good thing for the employers. It's not a good thing for the employees, who are effectively signing away a huge swath of rights.

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#69

Post by intopieces »

Binding 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.

Re: Google Ends Forced Arbitration for Employees

#70

Post by wil421 »

my_username_is_ wrote: post #50
ergothus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> collective employee action can be used to force an employer to stop exploitative behaviors? I'm all for balancing the employer employee interaction, but is this truly something that works for most industries? Google cares about it's reputation among potential tech employees. Other areas (say, Amazon warehouses) probably have a lot less trouble finding people desperate for work and willing to put up with crap becaus…

From what I understand, Amazon actually has trouble recruiting and retaining enough warehouse workers (especially during peak seasons). This is evident by them having a starting wage ($15/hr) that is more than double the minimum wage in many parts of the country

Glassdoor says the average was only $12 but in October they raised it to $15 minimum. Walmart’s low end is about $13 but the average is $17 an hour. Walmart has 1.5 million workers in the US, over 2 million worldwide.

The goods news is Amazon’s pay raise has made Walmart and Target increase their minimum wages as well.

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