Leading Lawyer Challenges Law Firms To Reject Compulsory Arbitration Of Employment Disputes; Urges No Arbitration Pledge
WASHINGTON, June 6, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- One of the nation's leading law firms representing whistleblowers has launched a campaign to encourage law firms across the country not to require their employees to arbitrate claims arising out of their employment relationship as a condition of employment. The campaign, called "Don't Work in the Dark," is spearheaded by Traci Buschner, the managing partner of Guttman, Buschner & Brooks PLLC, a firm whose lawyers have represented whistleblowers under the False Claims Act in cases returning more than $5 billion to federal and state governments.
"Employers have been able to bury disputes involving claims of sexual harassment, race, religion, gender, disability, and sexual orientation discrimination in private forums known as arbitration," said Ms. Buschner. "These forums provide no public record for matters of serious public importance and they render no precedent." Ms. Buschner has represented employees and labor unions for over two decades. "Our campaign encourages other firms to join us, and to encourage their vendors and clients to do the same." Ms. Buschner is also calling upon the deans of every law school in the United States not to allow any firm to recruit on campus that masks allegations of wrongful conduct in closed-door arbitration proceedings.
Nancy Gertner, retired Federal Judge and now Senior Lecturer at Harvard School of Law, wrote in support of the campaign, "arbitration – whose results are confidential – is not the place to adjudicate public rights, to determine workplace standards. That's one thing the #MeToo movement has shown us; confidential resolutions – settlements or arbitration – bury the problem of harassment, discrimination. They do not solve it!!"
Ms. Buschner's announcement comes on the heels of the supreme court decision on Epic Systems v. Lewis, sustaining the right of employers to compel employees to arbitrate claims where they have been forced to execute agreements waiving even the right to class action arbitration. "These types of agreements fundamentally erode the basic protections and rights accorded employees by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and prior civil rights laws, including the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments."
To sign on to the pledge, email Jessica Merriman at [email protected].
For more information, visit gbblegal.com.
SOURCE Guttman, Buschner & Brooks PLLC
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