Law Commons^™

Employment Arbitration And Voluntary Consent, Stephen Ware

Stephen Ware

The boom in non-union employment arbitration has caused great concern about protecting employees' access to courts. Virtually every commentator agrees that employment disputes should be litigated, rather than arbitrated, unless the employee has voluntarily consented to arbitration. While courts and commentators agree that an employee's voluntary consent is a prerequisite to employment arbitration, they do not agree on what constitutes voluntary consent. This article proposes a method of determining what constitutes voluntary consent to employment arbitration. The method proposed is simply application of ordinary contract law doctrines. The article develops the theoretical underpinnings of the contractual approach to arbitration and, …