June 6, 2016

Hopefully…the end of an unfortunate episode

The  New York Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association has announced  that its ethics complaint against an arbitrator who served as a neutral  in its contract dispute with the City in 2015 has been dismissed. The announcement was covered in the New York Daily News. With rhetoric to match its  unprecedented public and personal attacks against the arbitrator the union expressed its disappointment. The Union’s tactics raised the ire of many local arbitrators who have refused to serve in its cases (an event covered in an earlier post on this site). According to the Daily News the accusations of a failure to…

May 3, 2016

Girvan, Deason and Borgida on Implicit Gender Bias on Labor Arbitration Decision

In an article published in Law & Human Behavior,  and for which the NAA Research and Education Fund provided financial support, Professor Erik Girvan (Oregon Law), Grace Deason (Wisconsin-La Crosse) and Eugene Borgida (Minnesota) explore the presence of gender bias on labor arbitration decisions. Brief Summary In The Generalizability of Gender Bias: Testing the Effects of Contextual, Explicit, and Implicit Sexism on Labor Arbitration Decisions, Girvan, et. al, begin by noting that while prior studies about how arbitrators’ attitudes influence their decisions have determined that arbitrators’ decisions are influenced by their values and political ideology, none has explored…

April 13, 2016

Interest arbitration and the jurisdiction of the arbitrator

Arbitrator Lise Gelenter (NAA Member) comments on a recent decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit vacating an arbitration award: At first glance, the United States Third Circuit Court of Appeals’ recent decision concerning the limits of an interest arbitrator’s[1] powers appears non-controversial.  Hamilton Park Health Care Center Ltd, v. 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East (3rd Cir., 4/1/16).  The court held that the parties had the power to set the arbitrator’s jurisdiction and that their agreement had authorized the arbitrator to issue a multi-year award.  This is totally consistent with the Supreme Court’s…

April 6, 2016

Group of New York City Arbitrators Drop Major Public Sector Client

In a rare but fully explained collective action, twenty-seven Arbitrators on the rosters of the New York City Office of Collective Bargaining and New York State Public Employment Relations Board have indicated they will not work with the Patrolman’s Benevolent Association (“PBA”) on any future arbitration cases. In the letter, dated March 24, 2016, the Arbitrators addressed the PBA’s public expression of dissatisfaction with an interest arbitration decision involving their union.  While not identified, it is thought the letter references an interest arbitration decision issued by Howard Edelman late last year.  Descriptions of the PBA’s actions in the letter…

March 4, 2016

Justice Scalia and Arbitration

A short and interesting article in the March 7, 2016 issue of the New Yorker reminds us of the role that the late Justice Antonin Scalia played in the development of the law of arbitration. In “Courting Business“, James Surowiecki notes that Justice Scalia’s death is likely to have the greatest impact on what some scholars note is a decades-long trend of corporate-friendly decisions by the US Supreme Court.  Mr. Surowiecki points to two recent Court’s decisions on arbitration A.T. & T. v. Concepcion and American Express v. Italian Colors, as examples.  The Court’s majority opinions in both of…

Nov. 13, 2015

NAA member publishes Op-ED in LA Times: “Quit bashing arbitration”

Read the full LA Times Op-ED here: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-1109-goldman-arbitration-20151109-story.html

Nov. 13, 2015

Respected Law Professor Blog reflects on NYT’s arbitration series

Professor John Lande writing on”Indisputably, the Dispute Resolution Law Professors Blog” reacts to the New York Times articles on arbitration,  citing to the work in progress of Bob Bailey, Gil Vernon and Rafael Gely on journalism and arbitration.

Nov. 13, 2015

NAA Members react to NYT arbitration articles

Three NAA members independently registered comments with the New York Times in response to the newspaper’s articles on arbitration. Published letters to the editor came  from former NAA President Theodore J. St. Antoine, professor emeritus and Dean at the University of Michigan Law School, and Lise Gelernter, faculty member at the SUNY Buffalo Law School, about a recent series on arbitration: Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/opinion/forcing-consumers-into-arbitration.html?_r=0 Professor St. Antoine’s letter stated the following: “Re “Arbitration Everywhere, Stacking Deck of Justice” (“Beware the Fine Print” series, front page, Nov. 1): Properly administered by the American Arbitration Association, JAMS or other reputable body, arbitration before a private neutral party is cheaper, faster,…

Nov. 1, 2015

New York Times starts three part series on mandatory arbitration

The New York Times on Nov. 1, 2015 published the first part of an extensive  trilogy critical of mandatory arbitration and descriptive of the current legal status of class action matters under contracts of adhesion. Unfortunately, the articles failed to recognize the distinction between voluntary labor-management arbitration under contracts of cohension as a subset of “employment” arbitration. Their price has set off a flurry of reactions which ArbitrationInfo covers in other ‘News” posts. First the articles: Part 1: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/business/dealbook/arbitration-everywhere-stacking-the-deck-of-justice.html Part 2: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/02/business/dealbook/in-arbitration-a-privatization-of-the-justice-system.html Part 3: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/business/dealbook/in-religious-arbitration-scripture-is-the-rule-of-law.html…

Oct. 13, 2015

NAA responds to New York Times

Re: “Brutalized Behind Bars in New York State” (Ed., Sept. 30)Labor arbitration has a long and honorable history of peacefully resolving labor disputes. Labor arbitrators typically are neutrals selected by both parties and decide cases based on evidence presented at the arbitration hearing and the collective bargaining agreement.It is an urban legend that labor arbitrators often “split the baby”, as alleged in your editorial. The Code of Professional Responsibility adopted by the National Academy of Arbitrators, which was established in 1947, prohibits compromise by an arbitrator for the sake of attempting to achieve personal acceptability. As experienced practitioners in the…