Fortune: You probably don’t know you’re signing away the right to sue your employer. It could be illegal soon

March 29. 2022

ERA’s Jessica Ramey Stender is featured in a Fortune article about forced arbitration:

There are two main problems with forced arbitration from a workers’ perspective, says Jessica Stender, policy director and deputy legal director at Equal Rights Advocates. Workers are less likely to win a case in arbitration than they are in court, and if they do win, they’re likely to not gain as much money on average, Stender told Fortune.

“In arbitration, you have instead of a judge, a private arbitrator. This person has an inherent conflict of interest because the arbitrator is often being paid by the employer and often has multiple arbitrations with the employer,” she said.

“Many years ago [forced arbitration] used to be a process that was confined to settling large commercial disputes,” Stender comments, “Over the last 40 years, it has really taken off as a way for companies to, in many ways, keep workers from being able to assert their workplace rights and obtain justice for violations of their rights.”

Read the article.