Government Contractors May be Prohibited from Mandating Title VII Arbitration

Posted by marykeating on October 8, 2009 under Pending legislation, sexual harassment | Be the First to Comment

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.