Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire: The Feasibility of Post-Dispute Employment Arbitration Agreements

Changing the law to enforce only post-dispute agreements to arbitrate will not solve the problems of arbitration as a condition of employment. This change would leave the majority of employees who need arbitration in order to obtain justice empty handed, which is a situation far worse than the one employees face today. Rather than change from one unacceptable option to another, models for voluntary pre-dispute arbitration agreements need to be further developed

Employment Arbitration and Workplace Justice

SOME CVIL RIGHTS lawyers look at the growth of employment arbitration and see the end of workplace justice. Others see an exciting opportunity to create workplace justice. How can this be possible? How can attorneys with the same values see the same development in diametrically opposite ways? The heart of the answer lies less in these attorneys\u27 different perceptions of alternative dispute resolution ( ADR ) than in their different perceptions of the civil justice system. Different attorneys have conflicting opinions on how well the civil justice system provides workplace justice and these opinions shape their attitudes regarding arbitration in the workplace

Statement of the American Civil Liberties Union Before the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations

The American Civil Liberties Union supports the use of alternate dispute resolution in employment if it is voluntary and meets reasonable standards of fairness. Because of the narrowness of legal bases for relief and economic barriers to litigation, many people with legitimate disputes with their employers are unable to obtain relief in the civil courts. ADR holds the promise of increasing the number of people who are able to obtain justice in workplace disputes. ADR, however, contains the potential for enormous abuse. Absent external constraints, the employer has the ability and the incentive to shape its private justice system in a manner that will allow it to prevail in most cases. Very few individual employees have sufficient bargaining power to resist such abuses. It is imperative that the law prevent employers from requiring a de facto surrender of civil rights as a condition of employment. ADR should be permitted, but only when it is voluntary and contains reasonable due process protections. There are significant problems achieving such a system, especially in providing a truly neutral arbitrator in the absence of a union. These problems, however, are soluble, and need not destroy the cost effectiveness of ADR. While ADR has much to offer, it does not relieve the government of its obligation to provide a civil justice system which the average person can afford

Congress could soon spell the end of employment arbitration—but it’s not all good news for American workers.

Employment arbitration has become a dirty word on Capitol Hill. Congressman Hank Johnson claims that arbitration allows employers to stack the deck against the little guy for the 60 million employees bound by arbitration agreements. The Economic Policy Institute calls it an epidemic that is undermining decades of progress in labor rights

The Williams Scale of Attitude toward Paganism: development and application among British Pagans

This article builds on the tradition of attitudinal measures of religiosity established by Leslie Francis and colleagues with the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity (and reflected in the Sahin-Francis Scale of Attitude toward Islam, the Katz-Francis Scale of Attitude toward Judaism, and the Santosh-Francis Scale of Attitude toward Hinduism) by introducing a new measure to assess the attitudinal disposition of Pagans. A battery of items was completed by 75 members of a Pagan Summer Camp. These items were reduced to produce a 21-item scale that measured aspects of Paganism concerned with: the God/Goddess, worshipping, prayer, and coven. The scale recorded an alpha coefficient of 0.93. Construct validity of the Williams Scale of Attitude toward Paganism was demonstrated by the clear association with measures of participation in private rituals

Factors shaping prayer frequency among 9- to 11-year-olds

This paper begins by reviewing the evidence from international research concerning the personal and social correlates of prayer frequency during childhood and adolescence. Overall these data continue to support the view that young people who pray not only report higher levels of personal wellbeing but also report higher levels of pro-social attitudes. These findings raise a research question of particular relevance within church schools regarding the factors that predict higher levels of prayer activity among students. The Student Voice Project offers data that can illuminate this research question. Among the 3,101 9- to 11-year old students who participated in the project 11% prayed daily, 9% at least once a week, 32% sometimes, 11% once or twice a year, and 37% never. The present paper tests the power of four sets of predictor variables to account for individual differences in prayer frequency among these students: personal factors (age and sex), psychological factors (using the three dimensional model of personality proposed by Eysenck), church attendance (self, mother, and father), and family discussion about prayer (mother, father, and grandparents). Multiple regression analyses identified the discussion of prayer with the mother as the single most important predictor. These findings locate the development of the practice of prayer within the home, even more than within the church