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The Paga Saga, Tamar Meshel

Pepperdine Law Review

Employees routinely enter into employment contracts that contain arbitration ‎agreements and prohibit ‎them from bringing class and/or representative actions. These employees may therefore only bring claims against their ‎employers, ‎whether contractual or statutory, in arbitration on an individual basis. Such arbitration agreements and the class/representative action waivers that they contain are enforced nationwide pursuant to the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). In California, however, a judge-made rule (the Iskanian rule) prohibits the enforcement of representative action waivers found in arbitration agreements with respect to employees’ claims of Labor Code violations under California’s Private Attorney General Act (PAGA). A judicial battle is …