U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut has announced a bill called the Forced Arbitration Prevention Act. It aims to stop companies from asking workers to sign forced arbitration clauses as a condition of their employment.
“Forced arbitration deprives people of that basic right to a day in court, in public, on the record, fairly before a neutral decision maker.”
Blumenthal was speaking at a press conference on Thursday with former Chipotle workers.
The employees say they were forced to work overtime off-the-clock. They were not able to file a class action lawsuit for wage theft because they signed forced arbitration clauses when they were hired.
Blumenthal says unfair forced arbitration clauses are widely used to limit Americans’ access to justice in consumer, civil rights, employment, and antitrust disputes.
He says it's a bipartisan issue that he expects to pass the House.