
Bigger v. Facebook, Inc. - hhs
https://harvardlawreview.org/2020/06/bigger-v-facebook/
======
BelleOfTheBall
It's sad to see the law moving further and further in favor of corporations
either way, though I'm very much not a lawyer and, even after reading all
this, can't tell if this is as bad as it sounds.

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henryfjordan
It's not super bad. A FB worker was suing for overtime money. She had the
right under the FLSA to force FB to notify her coworkers that they might want
to join her suit. FB argued that half of her coworkers were covered by
arbitration agreements and they shouldn't have to give that half notice of the
lawsuit. The appeals court agreed, ever so slightly eroding the rights of
workers.

~~~
thelittleone
"slightly eroding the rights of workers". Seems bad enough to me.

How often are the rights of mega corporations slightly eroded? And how do
those erosions hold under the weight of appeals by megacorps lawyer hordes and
lobbyists?

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SpicyLemonZest
The rights of mega corporations get eroded very frequently. I think even anti-
corporate activists will admit to that. Their concern, generally, is that
corporate rights should be not eroded through gradual tiny reforms but blown
away completely.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
The rights of mega corporations to exploit particular things is eroded
frequently by regulation, however the size and power of mega corporations are
such that they can devote considerable effort to finding new things to exploit
that have not been effectively regulated yet.

They can of course also devote resources to stop regulation of their favorite
areas of exploitability.

~~~
vimax
Also, the large corporations have the lobbying money to influence regulation.
Once their behavior is egregious enough to warrant regulation, they able to
twist it to be a barrier to entry for new players further entrenching their
own position.

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stock_toaster
Strange that arbitration is even legal in employment agreements, due to the
general inequality of bargaining power, especially so with mega corps.

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pmiller2
That's why it isn't legal anymore in California.

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Hupriene
It's sad that people are so utterly resigned to having an ineffective federal
legislature that the possibility of restricting the use of binding arbitration
by means of the passage of new laws is not even considered.

~~~
rmrfstar
> ineffective federal legislature

That is a myth. Congress is _very_ effective. It just doesn't act in your
interest.

See [1] pdf page 10.

[1]
[https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...](https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf)

~~~
tenuousemphasis
Given their conclusion, how do you fix a system like this? Start over from
scratch? What does that look like? edit... Maybe it's the American Anti
Corruption Act? [https://anticorruptionact.org](https://anticorruptionact.org)

>What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly
constitute troubling news for advocates of “populistic” democracy, who want
governments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of
their citizens. In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does
not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy
outcomes.When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with
organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover,because of the strong
status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large
majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.

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jamesliudotcc
Here is the case as handed down by the 7th Circuit.
[http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-
bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Disp...](http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-
bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2020/D01-24/C:19-1944:J:Kanne:aut:T:fnOp:N:2464184:S:0)

I would mostly ignore the Harvard Law Review's recent cases section. It is
written by second year law students with barely any supervision. Circuit Court
judges write in plainer, better English than law students.

Also, I know link rot is a thing, but seriously, all of the opinions are
available copyright free and probably as PDFs provided by the courts who issue
them.

The workers who do have valid arbitration agreements aren't prevented from
suing by this case, that was already clearly the law before. That is not in
dispute. This case holds that in case some employees are prevented from suing
by their arbitration agreements, Facebook can skip giving them notice if it
can show the court the actual signed arbitration agreements. That is all.

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drawkbox
> _Seventh Circuit Holds that Arbitration-Bound Employees Cannot Be Given
> Notice of Collective Action Proceeding Under the Fair Labor Standards Act._

When SCOTUS upheld arbitration agreements [1][2] it was obvious they were
going to use this to strip away other worker rights. If it isn't evident
before it is now. This essentially says since the employee signed an
arbitration agreement and the other employees also did, this waives their
rights to be informed of any type of employee action that might benefit them
as a group (here it was overtime pay).

Pretty soon they'll use this precedent to strip away more and more, probably
even the first attack on California's innovation and economic key in rebuking
non-competes. Part of the reason California's economy is so good in terms of
tech and leading edge innovation is that they do not abide by non-competes. I
wonder how long it will take them to go after this using this idea that
signing arbitration agreements, which should be illegal, removes other
protections like not upholding non-competes in Cali.

It always blows me away how in all out war, battle after battle, companies are
with the mere idea of unions. It looks like a superpower invading a small
island nation repeatedly with little to no defenses. Unions are mostly
ineffectual today and most people have been propagandized away from them, but
even the hint of a group forming is attacked by rabid corporate lawyers even
decades after unions have faded. It tells me that they are greatly fearful of
unions. They have nothing to worry about, when arbitration agreements were
added to contracts in the early 2000s at my workplace I scoffed at it,
everyone looked at me funny. I do not like litigious people, but giving up
your entire right to the legal system? Not smart. Here we can see why, now
they are using it as a wedge to take more rights that were fought for. Giving
up rights so easy that were hard to attain is short-sighted, naive and way too
comfortable.

> _Over the past decade, the Supreme Court has steadily weakened the ability
> of parties bound by arbitration agreements to band together and sue. Given
> the rise of arbitration clauses in employment contracts, this trend has
> harmed workers since it is rarely economically feasible for workers to
> individually sue for, say, fifteen minutes of unpaid overtime a day,
> violations of statutes protecting laborers — like the Fair Labor Standards
> Act (FLSA) — have become harder to redress._

This will continue and continue. The one-sided and overpowered war rages on
against worker rights and freedoms. Ultimately this harms competition and
business in general, yes it may be better for the current company, but not the
market in general or quality of life. California's non-compete stance that
they are illegal is a good example, the market has benefitted many companies
and product innovations, other rights are the same. It is short-term and
monopolistic/oligopolistic to think that long term this helps the market.

We aren't too far off from being WorryFree(tm) [3]

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/business/supreme-court-
up...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/business/supreme-court-upholds-
workplace-arbitration-contracts.html)

[2] [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/a-divided-supreme-
cour...](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/a-divided-supreme-court-
upholds-forced-arbitration-agreements-a-win-for-businesses)

[3] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffewing/2018/07/13/could-
sorr...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffewing/2018/07/13/could-sorry-to-
bother-you-really-happen-partial-spoilers/#2e8cd7d61f0a)

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traverseda
As an aside I really like their website. If it rendered the citations cleanly
without javascript it would be perfect.

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willio58
This would be difficult with pure css because the citations can be expanded,
which in turn pushes any colliding citations slightly further down.

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traverseda
On firefox I'm not seeing them get pushed down, I'm seeing them get covered. I
suspect the citation implementation isn't very polished. Looks good though.

