If my employer proposes arbitration (vs judical system) should I 'opt out'?

I am, by no means, a legal expert. But, what’s the upside of giving up your right to use the judicial system?

@Aethelflaed “Bingo, yahtzee!” Exactly the initial reaction of me and several peers!

@WhiteWingDove And did they answer with something like “we’ll pay you x more a year” or “then we can afford to give you guys dental benefits” or “not getting shot in the head”? Or just blank stares? Or…?

I too am certainly no legal expert, but agreeing to have any disputes settled by arbitration is basically a surrender of many your legal rights, in my opinion. It is something that will most likely benefit the company more than it benefits employees. Without more details it’s hard to say, I suspect that there would be whole lot of fine print in this kind of agreement, but by agreeing to arbitration as opposed to litigation and the right to take your matter to the courts you are signing away many your rights as guaranteed under U.S. law. You will have to settle disputes outside of those guarantees.

You cannot “surrender” your legal rights. They are inalienable.

Arbitration is a quasi-judicial means of settling disputes. You are signing a contract that you will abide by the decision of the arbitrator. The contract must state that all decisions are “final and binding” on both parties. However, even with that phrase, most states provide for a grace period during which an arbitral decision may be appealed for cogent legal reasons.

Should you choose to abide by arbitration, you may please your employer. Should you decide to not abide by arbitration, you may, someday, perhaps have a legal settlement which could possibly gain you a sum of money. It’s your decision to make.

@CaptainHarley Perhaps “waiving” your legal rights would have been a more precise and accurate term than “surrendering” them. By agreeing to arbitration you very often “waive” your rights to, e.g. the right to sue, the right to a trial by jury, to the right of discovery and to the right of an appeal. In my mind “waiving” your rights and “surrendering” your rights is pretty much the same thing, a matter of inches only. If you care to argue differently, fine.

@lillycoyote

No, you’re correct, the distinction is a legal, fine one. : )

@CaptainHarley I love being right! Thank you! And I appreciate it because I was kind of wrong about something earlier tonight, on another thread, so it’s nice to be at least a little right on this one. :-)

LOL! : ))

Arbitration is generally much quicker, much less expensive and much less adversarial a way of solving disputes. Retaining rights to use the full legal system will cost you a lot more money and will take a lot longer (and could drag out for decades) and will be an adversarial relationship.

It kind of depends on what kind of potential issues you might have. Could you have any patent disputes with your employer? If you are in HR, this sounds pretty unlikely. Then you might easily feel comfortable signing up for arbitration. In arbitration, you probably will get a say in who the arbitrator is. They need to be impartial or they don’t get much work. Your paperwork should outline the arbitration process.

You should read all the paperwork, anyway. If you work in HR, this is the kind of thing you should know about. Dispute resolution is usually important work in an HR department.

@wundayatta Is this normally a “pick one” kind of situation, where the OP can only have arbitration as an option if they opt to waive their right to the legal system?

@Aethelflaed Good question, and one I can’t answer. I believe it is a pick one, otherwise what’s the point of going through the exercise? Still, I know that sometimes people go through arbitration and still end up in court. I’m not sure how that happens. But generally the whole point of this is to get people to sign up for the less costly option, and there is no point in doing that if they can bring in the big guns if they don’t like what the arbitrator says. Remember, the company is bound by arbitration, too. They can’t contest the decision after the fact. Those are the rules of the game.

One more thought about this… if your employer is the sneaky sort, he could be using this to help decide who might sue him in the future.