This is interesting, to be sure.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup on Monday ordered DoorDash to individually arbitrate employment misclassification claims brought by more than 5,000 couriers, denying its request to pause the proceedings and slamming the company’s “hypocrisy” in requiring workers to sign arbitration and then seeking classwide litigation.
Perhaps someone should send this article to Patreon:
Rejecting claims that the legal process it forced on workers is unfair, a federal judge Monday ordered food-delivery service DoorDash to pay $9.5 million in arbitration fees for 5,010 delivery drivers’ labor demands against the company.
“You’re going to pay that money,” U.S. District Judge William Alsup said in court. “You don’t want to pay millions of dollars, but that’s what you bargained to do and you’re going to do it.”
Barred from filing labor suits in court under the terms of a required arbitration contract, 6,250 DoorDash drivers brought their claims to an arbitrator. Last fall, the American Arbitration Association found each worker met the minimum requirements for filing a claim and ordered DoorDash to pay $12 million in fees. The workers paid $1.2 million in filing fees, or $300 per case.
DoorDash refused to pay its share of fees, arguing the workers failed to specify how much money they were seeking or prove they had a valid arbitration deal with the company.
Another informative article on the subject can be found here. Notice how all of the companies that force arbitration on their employees and consumers in order to avoid class action lawsuits are desperate to avoid actually entering arbitration with them. They’re trying to have their legal cake and eat it too.