<story><title>Google Employees Demand the End of Forced Arbitration Across the Tech Industry</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/10/google-employees-demand-the-end-of-forced-arbitration-across-the-tech-industry/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brightball</author><text>I know this won&amp;#x27;t be popular...but I don&amp;#x27;t understand why people are so anti-arbitration. Court cases are very expensive, regardless of the verdict. In the situation of running a business, you have a 1 business to many employees situation handling multiple cases simultaneously could get extremely expensive whether the cases are valid or not.&lt;p&gt;People use the threat of legal fees to extort business owners all the time because all it takes is one bored attorney who&amp;#x27;s willing to take the case on contingency while the business is looking at $150-500 &amp;#x2F; hr fees to defend itself. Happens to doctors constantly.&lt;p&gt;If you are a business that employees thousands of people the amount of potential legal costs could put you under entirely, because attorneys have to respond to every single claim that opposing attorneys make. These techniques exist almost solely to drive up legal costs.&lt;p&gt;When your potential cost for an employee is far higher than the actual compensation you can afford to pay, it significantly increases your risk for every job you can create.&lt;p&gt;This is usually a two way street as well.&lt;p&gt;In nearly every contractor agreement I&amp;#x27;ve read, the liability for the hired contractor is limited to at most the amount of compensation they receive from the business for the job they were performing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ergothus</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not anti-arbitration...I&amp;#x27;m anti-FORCED-arbitration.&lt;p&gt;I have suspicions about the incentives and stances of the arbitrators vs the law, but I&amp;#x27;m not well-versed enough to state those with confidence.&lt;p&gt;Almost everything you said about arbitration is true...but you left out the other side.  My employer already has a lot more leverage over me than I do over them.  When that scale is further tilted, across all their employees, many of the cost-benefit analyses about treating your employees fairly go into their benefit, further making things worse (and arguably more expensive for me).&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; People use the threat of legal fees to extort business owners all the time because all it takes is one bored attorney who&amp;#x27;s willing to take the case on contingency while the business is looking at $150-500 &amp;#x2F; hr fees to defend itself.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m willing to discuss the benefits of good anti-SLAPP legislation all day, but &amp;quot;threats&amp;quot; aren&amp;#x27;t the same as suing, and &amp;quot;bored attorney willing to take the case on contingency&amp;quot; aren&amp;#x27;t actually all that easy to find - there&amp;#x27;s a reason a lot of crap goes unpunished until a group large enough for a class-action lawsuit comes along - the payout isn&amp;#x27;t worth it, at least not for the lawyers who would win.&lt;p&gt;Companies LIKEWISE use the threat of legal fees all the time - the solution is not that employees need to sacrifice their legal rights.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google Employees Demand the End of Forced Arbitration Across the Tech Industry</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/10/google-employees-demand-the-end-of-forced-arbitration-across-the-tech-industry/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brightball</author><text>I know this won&amp;#x27;t be popular...but I don&amp;#x27;t understand why people are so anti-arbitration. Court cases are very expensive, regardless of the verdict. In the situation of running a business, you have a 1 business to many employees situation handling multiple cases simultaneously could get extremely expensive whether the cases are valid or not.&lt;p&gt;People use the threat of legal fees to extort business owners all the time because all it takes is one bored attorney who&amp;#x27;s willing to take the case on contingency while the business is looking at $150-500 &amp;#x2F; hr fees to defend itself. Happens to doctors constantly.&lt;p&gt;If you are a business that employees thousands of people the amount of potential legal costs could put you under entirely, because attorneys have to respond to every single claim that opposing attorneys make. These techniques exist almost solely to drive up legal costs.&lt;p&gt;When your potential cost for an employee is far higher than the actual compensation you can afford to pay, it significantly increases your risk for every job you can create.&lt;p&gt;This is usually a two way street as well.&lt;p&gt;In nearly every contractor agreement I&amp;#x27;ve read, the liability for the hired contractor is limited to at most the amount of compensation they receive from the business for the job they were performing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>taurath</author><text>People are anti-arbitration because they empathize more with the employees than businesses. It is objectively better for employees to not have to go through a company-issued arbiter when the company has wronged them. The argument you&amp;#x27;re making is a bit like trickle-down economics - what about instead of minimizing the cost of lawsuits, you do less things that are likely to land you in a lawsuit, which is the point of the laws in the first place?&lt;p&gt;Maybe then companies would focus their lobbying efforts on muting the effects of patent trolls and shady lawsuits. I do feel for the business owner, but taking away the rights of employees is worse for society.</text></comment>