Amazon running scared from arbitration at scale
The right kind of automation.
“Binding arbitration waivers” started out as a way for giant companies going into business with one another to avoid costly litigation by agreeing in advance to have a private arbitrator hear their disputes.
But Federalist Society judges, led by Antonin Scalia, spent a decade dismantling protections that ensured that binding arbitration was only used between equals, and not forced upon workers and consumers.
The result was a massive wealth-transfer to corporations, who could defraud and maim with impunity, safe in the knowledge that their victims had signed away their right to sue, especially through class action.
These victims would be limited to filing individual cases, each one confidential and non-precedential (meaning that a loss to one victim didn’t pave the way to losses to the rest), heard by a private “judge” who depended on the company for their salary.
The plan worked…until it didn’t. In 2018, 12,500 California Uber drivers filed arbitration claims against the company, putting the company on the hook to find 12,500 arbitrators and pay them $1500 retainers.
