Employees Signing Away Right to Sue

Employees Signing Away Right to Sue
By Kathy Chu The Associated Press
Published: Oct 16, 2003

NEW YORK (Dow Jones/AP) - Businesses are slowly adopting clauses requiring contract employees to sign away their right to sue, forcing disputes into arbitration instead.

So far, only a minority of corporations have adopted agreements that require workers to take disputes through a largely private arbitration process instead of into courtrooms. Yet it's a movement that has gained ground over the past decade.

"As more and more courts uphold this, companies may be feeling a greater comfort level that if they put a program in place, they won't have it overturned," said Marjorie Stein, a vice president at Cigna Corp. The Philadelphia company has required employees to abide by a dispute-resolution process, including "final and binding arbitration," since 1995.

In the past five years, the number of employees covered by workplace arbitration plans administered by the American Arbitration Association, the nation's largest arbitration firm, has more than doubled, to 7 million from 3 million. And employment disputes filed with the AAA have risen 38 percent, to 1,100 cases in 2002 from 800 in 1997. (snip/...)

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after I had the job for six months. They can't fire you for that.

It seems to me that that would be signing "under duress" and wouldn't be legally valid.

on edit: oops, didn't read the whole article before posting. I guess making this compulsory is a-ok with the courts!

My husband was killed in an explosion at his job at a chemical plant in 89...he was in a Union, so he worked with a contractor.. 9 other people were injured, and worked for the company and had signed away their rights to sue. My husband didnt sign anything.
I sued, and won. The sad thing is, no amount of money on earth replaces someone you love dearly.
The OSHA standards at so many of these places are despicable and dangerous...and of course, Raygun was in at the time. Workers rights to sue for injury and death should be sacred...Its the only recourse for their loved ones to survive in many cases.