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Corporations Are Getting Better at Gutting Worker Protections

Thanks to a recent Supreme Court ruling, more and more companies are using forced arbitration to undermine state and local labor laws.
Target employee Lindsay Walker at a store in New Jersey. More than 80 percent of non-union private-sector employees in the U.S. will be bound by forced arbitration clauses by 2024, according to a new report.
Target employee Lindsay Walker at a store in New Jersey. More than 80 percent of non-union private-sector employees in the U.S. will be bound by forced arbitration clauses by 2024, according to a new report.Julio Cortez/AP
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In May 2016, Brenda Rojas was hired as a server at a national chain restaurant in Salem, Oregon. On her first day, a manager sat down with her and five other new hires and handed them each in turn a tablet, asking them to tick off check boxes on the screen under their name.

“He just told us, ‘Oh, this is just saying that you’re not going to sue us ever,’” Rojas says of the legal forms she was given. “’And if you don’t sign it, you don’t get hired.’”