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    Trump's packed Supreme Court backs 'forced arbitration' that bars workers from taking abusive bosses to court

    Bill Schleicher, DCReport @ RawStory
    July 17, 2019

    Thanks for your support!

    This article was paid for by reader donations to Raw Story Investigates.

    Workers on an assembly line. REUTERS/Chris Keane/File Photo

    This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

    Bill Schleicher, DCReport @ RawStory

    Corporations are rapidly rendering sexual harassment, race and gender discrimination, life-threatening workplaces and wage theft immune to employee legal action.


    They achieve this by forcing the vast majority of non-union private-sector workers to sign away their rights to go to court or use class or collective arbitration. Instead many millions of workers are being forced to forgo these efficient legal ways to resolve issues and to file individual arbitration claims.

    A new report from the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Popular Democracy says that by 2024 more than 80% of non-union private-sector workers will find courthouse doors chained shut by forced arbitration clauses that ban lawsuits and collective actions. (EPI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank created in 1986 to press the needs of low- and middle-income workers in economic policy discussions.)

    Forced arbitration bears no resemblance to the voluntary bilateral arbitration used to resolve grievances, disputes under collective bargaining agreements and disciplinary issues in unionized workplaces.

    Hardest hit will be women, African-Americans, immigrants and low-wage workers as bosses compel employees to sign forced arbitration clauses to keep their jobs. The dense legalese giving up these rights is often hidden deep in the fine print of job application forms and new-hire paperwork, says the report titled “Unchecked corporate power: Forced arbitration, the enforcement crisis and how workers are fighting back.”

    Enforcement of these clauses was validated by the Supreme Court in the Epic Systems v. Lewis decision. Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch provided the decisive vote and wrote the majority opinion in the May 2018 decision.

    The 5-4 Epicruling lets individual arbitration clauses and waivers of collective action trump the 1935 National Labor Relations Act. That New Deal law gives workers the right to “concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.”

    The high court decision shows how Donald Trump, who campaigned as a champion of workers and whose inaugural address promised to always look out for the “Forgotten Man,” has used his powers to hurt workers. His campaign speeches, read carefully, show his concern for corporations and profits and his love of tariffs more than workers.

    No Right to Sue

    According to an earlier EPI study, 56% of workers had already lost their right to sue their employers when the Trump court’s Epic decision intensified the trend, kicking off “a surge in corporate use of forced arbitration.”

    Lower courts had split on the issue. By nominating Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, Trump swung the weight of the government toward management. Although the National Labor Relations Board had previously backed workers’ rights to collective action, Trump’s appointees gave it a new Republican majority.

    The labor board also got a new, and anti-labor, general counsel, Peter Robb, a former partner at a Philadelphia union-busting law firm who promptly issued an amicus curiae brief supporting the employers’ position in the case. Robb has started a hunt for pro-labor rulings that can be overturned, Bloomberg reported in May.

    The forced arbitration clauses backed by the Epic decision may let management select the arbitrators, crimp the amount of relief they can grant, and impose daunting fees and short filing periods on workers. No wonder businesses win the overwhelming majority of arbitration cases and when workers do win their awards are small. This individual arbitration process bears no resemblance to the voluntary bilateral arbitration used to resolve grievances, disputes under collective bargaining agreements and disciplinary issues in unionized workplaces.

    At an Applebee’s in Bend, Ore., managers regularly forced Mike Swisher and his coworkers to work off the clock without pay. When he went to the Northwest Workers’ Justice Project for help, he discovered that among the paperwork required for the job they had signed an arbitration clause banning class actions. Thus the employees have been unable to recover any of the pay they are owed and Applebee’s has not been held accountable for the wage theft.

    Mike is not alone: 93% of the workers who sign forced arbitration clauses don’t realize they are giving up their right to sue, the Center for Popular Democracy found.

    Amy, an immigrant from Vietnam who does manicures and fingernails, was paid below the minimum wage for working 11 hours a day, seven days a week in suburban Seattle. She often saw a manager inappropriately touching her coworkers. Construction worker Carlos Jiménez suffered wage theft totaling $10,000 in Queens, N.Y.

    Mike, Amy and Carlos are among the many workers whose stories of unremedied injustice were collected by the center.

    60 Million Banned from Courts

    Forced arbitration regimes already ban 60 million U.S. workers from protecting their employment rights through the judicial system. The practice is more prevalent in low-paid jobs, with an estimated two thirds of low-wage employers blocking the courthouse doors. The industries that use such tools to deny justice disproportionately employ women and African-Americans.

    With the deck stacked against them, an estimated 98% of workers who would otherwise go to court give up the effort when their only option is forced individual arbitration, according to the report. In the banned class and collective actions, workers aggregate their claims and make litigation cost-effective, and under union contracts, management is often required to bear half the cost, but individual arbitration cases and lawsuits are unrealistic for most working people.

    Corporate use of forced arbitration combines with cutbacks at enforcement agencies to severely erode workers’ rights. Budget cuts have left state and federal worker protection agencies that deal with race and gender discrimination, safety abuses and wage and hour violations underfunded and understaffed.

    Enforcement divisions of the U.S. Labor Dept. lost $9.6 million in the last seven years alone during a time when the number of workers they are responsible for grew by 13 percent. The number of workers per federal wage and hour inspector has climbed to 175,000, more than double the ratio in the 1970s. Employees per safety and health compliance officer tripled.

    Fightback legislation to override Epic Systems has been introduced in the House of Representatives by Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, introduced a companion Senate bill.

    The Restoring Justice for Workers Act would prohibit mandatory arbitration and class action waivers in labor disputes and the Forced Arbitration Repeal Act would eliminate the clauses in employment, consumer and civil rights cases. Neither bill is likely to pass the Senate, however, and even if it did the White House would be opposed.

    State “whistleblower enforcement laws” introduced in Oregon, Washington, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts and Maine and modeled on California’s Private Attorney General Act would let workers sue law-breaking employers on behalf of the state and all injured employees, even if they are covered by forced arbitration clauses, with penalty proceeds split between workers and underfunded state enforcement agencies.

    This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

    Enjoy good journalism?

    … then let us make a small request. The COVID crisis has slashed advertising rates, and we need your help. Like you, we here at Raw Story believe in the power of progressive journalism. Raw Story readers power David Cay Johnston’s DCReport, which we've expanded to keep watch in Washington. We’ve exposed billionaire tax evasion and uncovered White House efforts to poison our water. We’ve revealed financial scams that prey on veterans, and legal efforts to harm workers exploited by abusive bosses. And unlike other news outlets, we’ve decided to make our original content free. But we need your support to do what we do.

    Raw Story is independent. Unhinged from corporate overlords, we fight to ensure no one is forgotten.

    We need your support in this difficult time. Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Invest with us. Make a one-time contribution to Raw Story Investigates, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click to donate by check.

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    … then let us make a small request. The COVID crisis has slashed advertising rates, and we need your help. Like you, we believe in the power of progressive journalism — and we’re investing in investigative reporting as other publications give it the ax. Raw Story readers power David Cay Johnston’s DCReport, which we've expanded to keep watch in Washington. We’ve exposed billionaire tax evasion and uncovered White House efforts to poison our water. We’ve revealed financial scams that prey on veterans, and efforts to harm workers exploited by abusive bosses. We need your support to do what we do.

    Raw Story is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Invest with us in the future. Make a one-time contribution to Raw Story Investigates, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you.

    Report typos and corrections to: corrections@rawstory.com.
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    'Black lives don't matter!' Man goes on racist tirade after grocery store refuses to sell him booze

    Brad Reed
    April 22, 2021

    A South Carolina man this week this week was caught on camera going on a racist tirade in a grocery store after an employee refused to sell him alcohol.

    Local news station WBTV reports that 27-year-old John Walter Miles allegedly became upset while shopping with his girlfriend last week because the store clerk would not sell him booze.

    He then called the employee a racial slur, at which point a bystander took out their phone and started recording his behavior.

    It was at this point that Miles's girlfriend tried to get him to leave the store as he continued his racist tirade.

    "Guess what -- all lives f*cking matter, Black lives don't f*cking matter!" he said.

    When Miles saw he was being recorded, he looked directly into the camera and doubled down on his statements.

    "'Black Lives Matter' is the most racist thing we've ever f*cking seen!" he shouted.

    After reviewing footage of Miles's public meltdown, the Sumter Police Department arrested him and charged him with aggravated breach of peace and trespassing.

    Watch the video below.


    Minnesota AG feared Derek Chauvin would walk free right up to the moment the verdict was read

    Brad Reed
    April 22, 2021

    Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison told CBS News on Thursday that he did not think his state would win its case against former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin until the verdict was read on Tuesday.

    Ellison told CBS's "60 Minutes" that he knew going into the Chauvin trial that it was very hard to convict police officers of crimes, especially when the victims are people of color.

    "I was never convinced we were going to win this case until we heard the verdict of guilty," Ellison said. "I remember what happened in the Rodney King case… And I remember how devastated I felt when I heard that the jury acquitted those officers."

    Because of this, Ellison said that he kept second guessing himself and wondering if the prosecution needed to do more to convince jurors.

    "There was, every moment of this case, I thought, 'What are we missing… Do we need another witness?'" he explained. "I was not sure that we were going to get the just result that we did get until I heard Judge Cahill announce the verdict."

    Watch the video below.



    The prosecution team in the #DerekChauvinTrial has called the verdict a step toward justice. Minnesota Attorney Ge… https://t.co/WojfkCBD7N
    — CBS This Morning (@CBS This Morning)1619090706.0

    Former police chief: we must change the 'culture that created Chauvin' — and 'teach cops to do better'

    Matthew Chapman
    April 22, 2021

    On Thursday, The Sacramento Bee profiled Rick Braziel, the former police chief of Sacramento and a longtime watchdog of law enforcement — and his view of how to move forward from the murder of George Floyd, which will require more than just prosecuting the officers who commit crimes.

    "Departmental cultures are a huge impediment to reform," said the report. "We have all seen the video of Chauvin killing Floyd a little less than a year ago. What Braziel, with his point of view shaped by years of law enforcement, noticed most was how some cops on scene just stood by while Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck until he died. He knew what he saw, what desperately needed to be changed."

    "The culture that created Chauvin. The question is how you deal with it. You ask yourself, culturally, 'why did the other officers not stop this? What went horribly wrong?" said Braziel after the verdict. In his view, the problem is "a lack of leadership" — and the first part of the solution is to "teach cops to do better."

    Braziel, the report noted, has tangled with this issue before.

    "He was the inspector general for Sacramento County. His job was to review deputy-involved shootings, jail deaths, and accusations of abuse, among other duties. He wrote in his report of a 2017 fatal shooting Mikel McIntyre, a Black man, that deputies did not need to use fatal force," said the report. "Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones lost it, locked Braziel out of his buildings, and, in the end, the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors did nothing about it. McIntyre became another Black man who did not have to be killed, but was. Local accountability for the killing was not only denied, the cop whose agency caused community trauma — Jones — was defiant and unrepentant."

    "Braziel said he is in favor of departments having civilian participation in reviewing incidents in which cops are accused of killing suspects," said the report. "He thinks counties can employ a more collaborative approach to investigating fatal use of force by police. How? By having an investigator from one law enforcement agency in one jurisdiction investigate a fatal use of force in another. That would decrease, though not totally eliminate, the chances of a cop investigating another cop who might be a friend or even a former police academy classmate. He thinks communities should consider dedicating outside investigators to review killings."

    You can read more here.

     
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