Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Uber

I don’t know if you have been following the news of the shakeup at Uber because of a corporate culture of sexual harassment that is becoming epidemic are large companies like Fox and Tesla.
David Bonderman resigns from Uber board after making joke about women at company event on sexual harassment
Washington Post
By Brian Fung and Craig Timberg
June 13, 2017

Billionaire businessman David Bonderman, a member of Uber’s board, resigned Tuesday after making what he called an “inappropriate” comment about women at a company-wide meeting that was aimed at addressing the harassment of women and other unprofessional conduct within the company.

The comment came as an interruption of fellow board member Arianna Huffington, who was explaining the benefits of having more female representation on Uber's board.
What do all these companies have in common?

They all share one trait that I feel leads to these complaints… they all have binding arbitration.

So what does this have to do about sexual harassment?

Well for one thing you can’t talk about it and these women who have come forward with their complaints are violating their contracts and can be sued by their employer. Second the companies hire the arbitration judge and if you lose you pay for the cost of arbitration which can cost thousands of dollars. Lastly if the company breaks the law, you can’t sue in court. So the deck is stacked against us because of binding arbitration.

In other words, you call you cable company and the tech come out to your house and starts cursing you and making derogatory comments and you file a complaint with the state agency that enforces the non-discrimination laws. The cable company can have it thrown out because you signed a binding arbitration clause… What! Wait I never signed anything about binding arbitration! Yes you did when you got cable; way down in the contract that you signed was the clause.

Just about everything you get have a binding arbitration clause.

What can you do about it?

Absolutely nothing.

There were a number of bills in Congress that would have limited binding arbitration to billing disputes and not violations of the law, however, the Republican Congress have let the bills die.

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