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Saturns for Rickshaws: Why Predispute Employment Arbitration Should Be Preserved - Chapter 25 - AAA Handbook on Employment Arbitration and ADR - 2nd Edition

Author(s): 
Samuel Estreicher
Page Count: 
10 pages
Media Description: 
PDF from "AAA Handbook on Employment Arbitration and ADR - 2nd Edition"
Published: 
December, 2010
Jurisdictions: 
United States
Practice Areas: 
Employment,
Contractual or Consensual Basis of Arbitration,
Agreement to Arbitrate,
Contents of Arbitration Agreement
Author Detail: 

Samuel Estreicher is the Dwight D. Opperman Professor of Law, Co-Director of the Institute of Judicial Administration, and Director, Center for Labor and Employment Law at New York University School of Law. He was co-counsel for petitioner in Circuit City Stores v. Adams. Mr. Estreicher earned an A.B. from Columbia College, a M.S. in Industrial Relations from Cornell University and a J.D. from Columbia Law School. He is the author of FOUNDATIONS OF LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT LAW (Foundation Press, 2000) (with Stewart J. Schwab).

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Description: 

Originally from: AAA Handbook on Employment Arbitration and ADR - 2nd Edition

Despite a decade-long campaign by the plaintiffs’ bar to render Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp.1 a dead letter, the Supreme Court has upheld the enforceability of predispute arbitration agreements in the employment context. More recently, in Circuit City Stores, Inc. v. Adams,2 the Court agreed with eleven federal circuit courts that § 1 of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), which excludes “contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce,” should be interpreted narrowly.

The Court rejected the Ninth Circuit view that § 1 excludes all employment contracts from the reach of the FAA. The specific references to employment contracts of “seamen” and “railroad employees,” the Court reasoned, indicated congressional intent to exclude only employment contracts of "transportation workers," i.e., other "class[es]" of workers directly engaged interstate transportation functions in the same way that seamen and railroad employees do.