Maine Employment Lawyer Blog
The Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution entitles you to a jury trial if your employer violates your common law rights. For example, if you and your employer had a contract which set forth how much your employer would pay you and it violated the contract, the Seventh Amendment would entitle you to a jury trial.
The Seventh Amendment helps to level the playing field between extremely powerful corporations and ordinary people. For that reason, some extremely powerful corporations require job applicants to waive their Seventh Amendment rights before they will hire them. They sneak “arbitration clauses” into the fine print of employment applications or employee handbooks. These arbitration clauses require you to give up your right to a jury trial and, instead, pursue your claims in a private judicial system that has many features which benefit companies and disadvantage employees–that is why companies require employees to agree to them.
Even if you notice the arbitration clause in your employment application and object to it, the employer will almost never hire you unless you agree to it. As more and more companies use these arbitration clauses, it will become harder and harder for people to find jobs with employers that do not require them to relinquish their constitutional rights.
Sometimes courts will refuse to enforce unfair arbitration clauses. If your employer has violated your rights and one of these arbitration clauses applies to you, you should contact an experienced employment lawyer to determine if the arbitration clause is legally valid.