In a case involving the rights of tens of millions of private-sector employees, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote margin, delivered a major blow to workers, ruling for the first time that workers may not band together to challenge violations of federal labor laws.
Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said that the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act trumps the national Labor Relations Act and that employees who sign employment agreements to arbitrate claims must do so on an individual basis and may not band together to enforce claims of wage and hour violations.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the four dissenters, said that the 1925 arbitration law came well before federal labor laws and should not cover these arm-twisted, "take-it-or-leave it" provisions that employers are no insisting on.
The inevitable result, she warned, is that there will be huge underenforcement of federal and state statutes designed to advance the well being of workers.
She urged Congress to correct the court's elevation of the arbitration act over workers' rights.
Notably, Ginsburg's dissent is five pages longer than the majority's opinion. And Gorsuch spends time in his opinion to respond point by point to the minority's arguments.
The ruling came in three cases potentially involving tens of thousands of non-union employees brought against Ernst & Young LLP, Epic Systems Corporation and Murphy Oil USA, Inc.
Each required its individual employees, as a condition of employment, to waive their rights to join a class-action suit. In all three cases, employees tried to sue together, maintaining that the amounts they could obtain in individual lawsuits were dwarfed by the legal fees they would have to pay as individuals to bring their cases under the private arbitration procedures required by the company.
The employees contended that their right to collective action is guaranteed by the National Labor Relations Act. The employers countered that they are entitled to ban collective legal action under the Federal Arbitration Act, which was enacted in 1925 to reverse the judicial hostility to arbitration at the time.
A study by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute shows that 56 percent of nonunion private-sector employees are currently subject to mandatory individual arbitration procedures under the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act, which allows employers to bar collective legal actions by employees.
The court's decision means that tens of millions of private non-union employees will be barred from suing collectively over the terms of their employment.
I think later in the summer they will be ruling on a case that challenges unions. Basically says that someone cannot be forced to pay union dues and can fully opt out.
This will be a good thing. Really deal a blow to union thugs.
Well, this is the anti-worker bs that those Rust Belt and "Reagan Democrat" types voted for.
Disgusting, but hardly shocking. Gorsuch, Trump's appointee to the stolen SC seat, has a history of ruling against workers and in favor of large companies.
The supreme court nominee was the only judge to rule that Alphonse Maddin deserved to be fired for deserting broken-down truck in sub-zero temperatures ........................................................................................................................................ With the temperature outside an Arctic-level -27F (-33C), the brakes on the 50-plus foot trailer (although not those in his cab) froze in the locked-on position. Maddin radioed in and was told to expect a repairman within the hour.
The engine was designed to be incapable of idling and the heater in the bunk area of the cab wouldnt work.
I bundled up in a blanket as best I could and lay on the bunk, said Maddin.
He woke up three hours later with no sign of a repairman, blue with cold and numb.
I couldnt feel my feet, he said. The temperature gauge inside the cab registered -14F.
He phoned a relative, his speech slurring one of the symptoms of hypothermia. He climbed from the cab and could barely stand.
Calling the office again, he was given two choices. Try to drive away, dragging the wheel-locked trailer, or sit tight.
He figured the first was impossible, the second disastrous.
I was afraid I was going to die, he said.
He unhitched the cab from the trailer and despite being low on fuel managed to drive it to a gas station a few miles away, then, within 15 to 30 minutes, returned to find a repairman finally on the scene. After repairs, he delivered the meat.
But TransAm Trucking fired him for abandoning his load.
Maddin sued under a law that protects drivers who refuse to operate a vehicle in dangerous conditions.
I think later in the summer they will be ruling on a case that challenges unions. Basically says that someone cannot be forced to pay union dues and can fully opt out.
This will be a good thing. Really deal a blow to union thugs.
I know my father always hated how unions operated in spite of working in union jobs for most of his life. He absolutely never felt accurately or adequately represented by the unions he was forced to join, and he basically felt like the only thing that had really changed was which particular group of assholes were exploiting him and parasitically profiting from his labor against his will.
Some unions, in some industries, are still relatively necessary, effective, and generally pro-worker. But others have definitely evolved into over-politicized and bureaucratic nightmare messes that generally do more harm than good for the people they claim to represent.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76 "POwned again." --- blight family