Posted by marykeating on December 19, 2009 under Government contractors, Pending legislation, sexual harassment | 
The Franken Amendment has passed the House and is expected to become law. Under the amendment to next year’s appropriations bill, contractors doing more than $1,000,000 of business with the federal government must agree not to require arbitration, rather than court, claims of discrimination, sexual assault, and other employment claims. Six months after the effective date of the law, the contractors are responsible for ensuring that their own subcontractors with jobs of more than a million dollars also abide by the law.
The amendment forbids mandatory arbitration on the following types of claims:
- any claim under title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and
- any tort related to or arising out of sexual assault or harassment, including assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment, or negligent hiring, supervision, or retention.
The law arose out of a horrendous situation involving a woman who was raped and terrorized overseas while working for an American company. The perpetrators worked for an American company, and our government. Her employment contract required her to arbitrate her claims, and limited her remedies. Senator Franken’s amendment forbids companies from imposing this waiver of rights on people working as employees or independent contractors on major goverment contracts.
Posted by marykeating on October 8, 2009 under Pending legislation, sexual harassment |
The Senate, with the help of a number of Republicans, passed the Al Franken Amendment (Senate Amend. 2566) to the Defense Appropriations Act yesterday. (No Democrats voted against it.) The amendment would prohibit government funding to defense contractors and subcontractors if they require employees to arbitrate Title VII claims. The bill states that it prohibits the U.S. government from using “funds for any Federal contract with Halliburton Company, KBR, Inc., any of their subsidiaries or affiliates, or any other contracting party if such contractor or a subcontractor at any tier under such contract requires that employees or independent contractors sign mandatory arbitration clauses regarding certain claims.”
The amendment came in reaction to Jamie Leigh Jones, a Halliburton computer technician working in Iraq. She was drugged and raped by her coworkers. She returned to find her court case barred because she had signed an employment agreement requiring arbitration of all disputes. No one was prosecuted, after various parts of her file were inexplicably lost by Halliburton. Ms. Jones told her story on national television, and also accused a state department employee of sexually assaulting her, too (according to the news clip, he admitted doing so). Ms. Jones’ story is not unique, and claims of rape in the military are rampant.
Title VII forbids discrimination on the basis of sex, race, religion, color, and national origin. Sexual harassment, of which rape is an extreme form, is sexual discrimination under Title VII.
Arbitration has become more popular with employers, since it is a private process, there is no appeal, no legal precedents are set, and it affords no jury trial. The fees are often quite high, despite the commonly heard rallying cry of expensive litigation. For a three-person arbitration panel, the parties must pay by the hour for each of their fees to prepare for and hear the case, as well as hefty administrative fees imposed by the American Arbitration Association. By contrast, agencies such as the EEOC and MCHR are free, and court filing fees are low.
