UPDATED 22:01 EDT / JANUARY 14 2019

POLICY

Google employees double down in their fight against forced arbitration

Scores of employees at Google LLC are increasing their efforts to end forced arbitration at the company to create more awareness of a practice they deem unacceptable.

Late last year, Google staff all over the world took to the streets in protest and demanded an end to forced arbitration in sexual misconduct cases. Google reacted to the discontent by making a number of changes in company policy, but activists in the company feel not enough has been done.

One of those changes at Google was to make forced arbitration optional for claims of sexual assault and harassment. Other large tech companies, including Facebook Inc., did the same thing shortly after Google. Activists at Google are now saying that the changes don’t cover other forms of harassment or discrimination in the workplace.

“The change yielded a win in the headlines, but provided no meaningful gains for worker equity … nor any actual change in employee contracts or future offer letters (it seems Google is still sending out offer letters containing the old policy),” a group called Googlers for Ending Forced Arbitration said in a Medium post Tuesday. “Ending forced arbitration is the gateway change needed to transparently address inequity in the workplace.”

The group now plans to use social media to educate people on the perils of forced arbitration, a practice that for a long time has kept internal disputes behind closed doors and precluded the right of employees to sue employers.

The group has created an “End Forced Arbitration” Twitter account as well as a dedicated Instagram account. Both these accounts will be regularly updated with information pertaining to forced arbitration as well as include testimonials from experts and people who have been on the wrong end of the practice.

The plan of action is mobilizing tech workers to call on the government to make changes while making people aware of the possible pitfalls in signing contracts with such clauses.

“Our goals are twofold,” Tanuja Gupta, a program manager at Google, told Forbes. “Arm people with information about the practice of forced arbitration so they can press leadership within their own companies for change, as well as call on Congress to support legislation that will end this practice.”

Image: Michael Coghlan/Fickr

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