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Friday, November 06, 2015

Is the Uber Bubble About to Pop?

Uber's shady practices have been the subject of much debate — and now they could be the subject of a court ruling.

The New York Times performed a public service over the weekend with the first two installments of a three-part series on the shady clauses in consumer and employment contracts that enable corporations to divert legal disputes into secret, extra-judicial arbitration panels. The corporation pays the arbitrators hearing the case, and the rulings, from what we can tell about this opaque process, favor the corporation, if only because an arbitrator siding with the people who do the hiring ensures them more work in the future.

It’s amazing that we’ve allowed corporations to build their own parallel legal system, rupturing the fundamental right of access to courts. “It’s in two amendments of the Bill of Rights,” said Sen. Al Franken, one of Congress’ leading critics of mandatory arbitration, on a conference call reacting to the Times series. “The Second Amendment is supposed to be important, but that’s one amendment. [Trial by jury] is really important, that’s in two amendments.” (It’s the Sixth and the Seventh, incidentally.)

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We are all looking for this big boom to fail America. Look around and judge for yourself , America is over and we are just waiting for the total collapse in a brief moment. It won't happen like that friends , it has been going on for 7 years now. The only thing left is to destroy the left , civil war is inevitable . You had better be ready , you have had plenty of warnings and plenty of time.

Anonymous said...

Uber is not the only corporation that practices this method of inter-corporation arbitration. Recently my fiancee started working for Chipotle and was made to sign a waiver of legal recourse that had the option for a third party arbitration hearing for all matters between the company and the employee.