Sign New Hampshire Arbitration Agreement Later

Document type sign arbitration agreement new hampshire later

[Music] okay hello everybody welcome to today's webinar we are super excited to have an incredible group of panelists and two really wonderful remarkable moderators today I think it's going to be a great conversation before we get started I just wanted to give a quick announcement so for those I don't know my name is Molly Coleman and the National organizing director for the people's parody project which is the group that has taken over today's webinar so we are as many of you will have seen we recently launched a Summer Institute [Music] justice project and justice catalyst that will be working to address many of the issues that we'll be talking about on today's webinar the Institute will place law student fellows will hire full-time la serda fellows to be doing covert 19 rapid response work for the duration of the summer so if you are a law student on this call looking for summer employment check out the web site that I will send in the chat it's people's parity org slash Summer Institute there are opportunities to secure funding if you are not eligible for funding from your school if you are eligible for public interest running from your school we should qualify as a nonprofit organization doing public interest legal work but really the Institute is an opportunity to connect organizations that have incredible need in this time of crisis with law students who are eager to do work to end economic inequities to confirm the fact that we are continuing to lock up a significant percentage of our population even though we know that that is detrimental to health at all times and especially in the time of pandemic we're working to make sure that if we have to vote by mail and November that that is secure and that people who are opposed to voting aren't able to stop that process so we'll be doing a ton of incredible work we are looking for students who are interested in doing this work all summer we're looking to connect with organizations who have for law students we'll hear about some of those projects today from Sandeep and from Alisa but if you are on this webinar and do you have potential projects that you need support with please get in touch with us and then we're also looking to talk to much money interested in being a part of the Institute who have capacity to volunteer a couple of hours every week in an oversight role so basically this is an all-hands-on-deck situation as you'll hear today the crisis is immense and there is really deep incredible need coming out of it so we hope to be able to work with all of you at this summer's Institute that is all for me I will hand it over now to Niki and Sejal to pick us off I welcome everyone it's really great to be here with all of you thank you Molly Jacob for organizing this my name is stage Olson and I'm the national policy director of the peoples charity project which is a new campaign of law students organizing to end corporate legal power in courtrooms and legislatures and beyond we are now organizing on nine campuses in several states and we are growing rapidly so if any of you are interested in starting a key key key chapter come pick me up so we're here today to talk about the people's charity projects Rapid Response Network about five weeks ago as the country was beginning to shut down and we were beginning to see carbon 19 spread rapidly throughout throughout the population but especially through low-wage workers people who are incarcerated and other vulnerable populations we decided to a lot we realized that you know we were facing the biggest crisis that our generation has ever faced and hopefully ever well we're looking at something like 30 percent unemployment if we don't do anything we are looking at you know millions of people around the country you don't have access to leave millions of people around the country do not have any way to pay rent that is you in five to six days and so this is a massive economic crisis and it is you know I think the public health crisis is showing you know how deep the fissures are in our society and how deeply unequal your how deeply on well we have deeply unequal power is distributed and so we're seeing that low-wage workers you don't have the power to fight for fair works they're fair working conditions and safe workplaces are getting sick and dying we have seen over a hundred and thirty Kate over 130 Amazon warehouses where workers have gotten sick people have died because they work at grocery stores and so I think for us like this is a moment where all of the ways that corporate legal power has screwed over working folks are really coming to the fore and they're deadly consequences are really evident and so we began organizing law students around the country to help advocates who are working to respond to the rapid but we respond rapidly to the immense and urgent needs that are created by this crisis and to figure out what we can do to be supportive not just to keep working families afloat although that's our number one priority but also to build a more just equitable and fair world on the other side and so with that I'm really excited to have this conversation with several really incredible partners of really incredible students who have been leading that work and I'm excited to share that with all of you nikki is going to introduce our panelists and I'm really they're going to give us a quick overview of what they're doing what their work is like in general have a fight corporate power and what they're doing in this urgent moment in particular hi I'm Nikki I am a 1l and I've been doing a lot of the PvP natural Cova 19 Rapid Response work and I'm gonna introduce our amazing panelists so first we have Jason Salgado who is finishing his 2l year at Harvard Law School and is a member of the Harvard chapter of the peoples priority project as well as it's been working very closely with myself and Sejal as national code 19 response rapid response coordinators Jason worked at Greater Boston legal services through AmeriCorps his before law school and then returned his 1l summer so Jason we just love to hear how you're doing where you are in the world right now I'm doing as well as possible I'm in Cambridge and sticking around the area and just continuing to finish up the last week of the semester and continuing on this work as much as I can so I'm focused on employment law and let make you said have been mostly focused on unemployment work because of my background at jbls um we've been focusing a lot on unemployment insurance just because it's one of the most urgent needs right now nationally there you know 26 million people that have applied for a UI in the past four weeks and I think that number is gonna grow I think that number is under-inclusive just because people haven't been able to access the system so it's a really urgent need and you know like seychelles said if you want to get involved with this work please do it I think it's gonna the effects of it are gonna be long-lasting and we'll need all the help that we can get with it thank you Jason so next we have ELISA Peterson ELISA is a Lyman fellow at the Center for popular democracy where she works to combat forced arbitration and enforce workplace protections before CPD ELISA went to Yale Law School and also served as a policy advocacy organizer for the organization no you're 9 so Alyssa where are you how are you doing and give us a brief overview thanks Nikki I'm actually in Cambridge Massachusetts an area that you won't know well um so I'm doing reasonably well and I think what I have been really heartened by is just the overwhelming support that we've gotten from PPP throughout this crisis like for example when the federal bill there was threatening to cut out it immigrants out of the stimulus checks like PPP folks are so helpful and helping push back against the narrative that people should not get money and we did not win that battle but it was just the research they went was really critical in making pushing truck Schumer to do better on the issue so again it really appreciated the supporting PPP in general what we've been working on now at CPD is trying to figure out as some folks don't know this but we are basically a network of 50 affiliates who are sort of grassroots really scrappy organizing groups across 30 states and what these groups have been doing is they've been setting up mutual aid networks and they're also seeing a sort of tidal wave of people who need support accessing UI as Jason mentioned it's a huge crisis that we're in now so what we've been doing and I'm happy to talk about this more later is working with law students to try to set up services for people to get access to UI but in a way that provides them with political education so we know who is directly responsible for the austerity and the failure to conduct mass testing that is led to this crisis thanks Alysa so next we have son Hasan Sandeep is the legal director at the open markets Institute an organization working to address threats to democracy individual liberties and national security from corporate concentration of monopoly power he previously served as regulations counsel at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau so Sandeep give us your where are you how are you doing and a brief oh yeah thanks so much so I'm in Washington DC working from home like basically everyone work all things considered I'm doing pretty well I have a routine set up in doing my best to avoid cabin fever Chad's is an exciting time for my colleague by myself you know I think our sort of guiding principle is never let a crisis go to waste the last crisis unfortunately then resulted systemic change certainly not the systemic change we want it we're hoping do better this time we're certainly doing our best and I guess I'll focus on two areas of work I'll talk about our playing against corporate consolidation now and talk a little bit more about the non-compete board when we get into discussion say we've been pushing for ban on corporate consolidation for the duration of the crisis and the immediate aftermath and I think we are pushing for this for multiple reasons so as a basic matter of consolidation is one reason the crisis is so severe our economy doesn't have the surge capacity to respond to something like a pandemic so I take the example of the healthcare system thanks to consolidation and financial financialization of the hospital's activity the United States today had six hundred thousand fewer hospital beds that it did it 1975 even though our population is probably doubled since over that forty five year period the consolidation has made our supply chain and healthcare food number of sectors extraordinarily vulnerable and this crisis could make the concentration problem even worse unless Congress and regulators act so we probably all know small and medium-sized businesses they're extraordinarily vulnerable right now they're struggling to pay their bills struggling their workers struggling to meet rent and on the opposite end of the spectrum large and very large businesses private equity firms or flush with cash and really looking to go on a buying spree and unless there is legislative and regulatory action that won't happen to really have a recipe for a supercharged M&A activity now going forward so in late March we called for Congress and the relevant regulators to institute a merchant moratorium under which any corporation or private equity fund worth more than a hundred million dollars wouldn't be able to engage by out for the duration of their crisis and so that was about a month ago we got some very positive news today senator Warren and representative Acacio Cortes announced their support for a moratorium and it's a very strong proposal we certainly hope their allies Congress take it up and fight for it but getting you know two of the most visible progressives in Congress on board it's a success and we hope exist the beginning of major developments on its front and their secondary artwork is fighting non-competes which we believe are especially pernicious doing this crisis but I'll talk more about that during our panel discussion great thank you so much so our last panel of this is surah who goes Ronnie jirayu is a 1l at NYU Law School and a member of the NYU chapter of the people's parity project try there's been a leader in PPP's efforts to ensure that workers are able to enforce their rights including serving in the coalition to pass the Empire Act in the state of New York prior to law school acharya rich is a paralegal at the federal defenders of New York so where are you where are you how are you doing give us a brief overview hi everyone I am still in Brooklyn and it's okay here and I'm doing fine I am deeply concerned about how this crisis is impacting black and brown immigrant communities and mostly because of racialized inequities in access to healthcare access to housing and worker protection and I'll be focusing in the panel today about access to worker protection so including paid sick leave but even hazard pay PPE and other forms of safety and then also workers abilities to enforce those protections and the disasters impact that forced arbitration and class action waivers are having on that right and ability but I think there's a number of other areas that deserve our attention as well talking about massive criminalization and incarceration rates that have led to people being caged in prisons during this crisis and a number of other areas in our societies that are being exposed during this crisis and exposing currently vulnerable populations so I'm looking forward to talking about that ready so we really appreciate all of you being here to talk about the work that you're doing as students or as organizers so why don't we go ahead and dive in so today we're gonna talk about a couple just a sample of the ways that you know we're fighting for economic justice this crisis but like try you Sandeep and everyone else pointed out you know the the crises that this it the crisis is so deep and the justice in our economy goes so deep like one so deep before this that this is just a sample of the issues that PPP is working on and that we need to be acting on urgently so but I wanted to start by talking a little bit about unemployment insurance and for I wanted to hear from Melissa and Jason about the work that you're doing in the last five weeks more than twenty six million people apply for unemployment insurance and the Fed estimates that we may see unemployment rise as high as thirty two percent rate this pandemic significantly higher than it was even at the peak of the Great Depression so Alyssa and Jason did you share a quick introduction to unemployment insurance how does some works and what isn't isn't working Jason do you want me to start or do you want to start okay so I think so some CPD again our affiliates our member base is primarily working-class Latin accent migrants and black black workers so I think for us it's really important to point out that the unemployment crisis is really disproportionately hitting people who are working and really contingent positions the economy for example one a survey of hourly workers found that four and ten in March this is before this is one month ago four antennas lost their jobs of our early service sector workers and half of those appointed lost their hours so this is sort of a crisis impacting people who are service workers who are people in the gig economy people who again have have lost income and then also don't have the savings to draw upon to do whether this crisis this so effectively one of the sort of few bright spots in the federal bill that was really sort of in most part of large give away to corporations what we ended up doing is there's a very large expansion of the unemployment insurance system that creates a lot of opportunities for organizing so for example before people who you could be cut out of getting really valuable UI benefits from if you are self-employed if you're a gig work or if you had some insufficient work hours or if you didn't make enough money but what the federal bill did is really extend the program to cover many more people who have lost hours or been otherwise impacted by the corona virus pandemic the other really important piece that happen th federal legislation is there was this this temporary $600 a week benefit and for low-wage workers that is like incredible sum of money that would have enormous impact on them and their families so what we're trying to do here at CPD is help people access that but the $600 benefit has been really under threat and people like Bernie Sanders had really rallied to get it into place and now there's gonna be a big part of the federal level to retain the benefit that's sort of the federal landscape and who we're serving I don't know if Jason deep stuff to add to that yeah just a little bit about um you know I think the federal benefit expansion is incredibly important to get immediate relief I do think this ties into the systemic issue of misclassified workers and the gig economy that um you know these employees are employees they're workers just like any other employee that are entitled to these benefits and really the federal program is completely necessary to get immediate relief in their hands but it represents a huge bailout to multi-billion dollar corporations where you know in multiple states California New York these workers have already been found eligible for unemployment assistance on the state level and these companies should be paying into that system they're just not complying with the laws and failing to pay into it or failing to provide wage information which is necessary to make eligibility determinations so well I think it's really important that we fought for these benefits in the short term we're really going to need to mobilize around this issue to make sure that these were their cell protected going forward when these benefits expire at the end of the year Jason could you explain a little bit about the miss classification issue for anyone listening in who's not lawyer sure yeah so prevalent in the gig economy but also all across the economy as well where employers that have control over their workers that can direct them what to do just like any other employer call them independent contractors which means they're technically in business for themselves and under any almost any state law this is just completely false and incorrect it's a way to avoid liability for minimum wage for overtime for unemployment insurance paid leave and sick time and you know these companies are just fighting in any way they can their latest argument in court is that you know we as consumers are employing gig workers anytime we call an uber which is just completely ridiculous so I think we're gonna really need to mobilize around this issue in the long term you know these companies are using this crisis trying not to let it go to waste on there and either by trying to create a third employment category which would basically insulate them from liability going forward so I think this will be a real systemic issue and we're seeing the consequences of it now with the unemployment insurance system thanks Jason so could you actually tell us more about the work work you've been doing to expand unemployment insurance in Massachusetts through PPP's Rapid Response Network sure yeah so there have been a couple pieces of it one is just ongoing research projects as they come up with with greater bus and legal services and end with national policy organizations on eligibility for immigrant workers eligibility for gig workers and how they can access the state systems and what would be the best approach to get them access to unemployment insurance going forward the second and I think related to the systemic issue is plugging into Greater Boston Legal Services efforts to have vulnerable workers access the system help them through applications you know these systems they're unfortunately not accessible they're not LEP accessible I'm for folks who don't speak English as an especially that's a huge problem now with all the in-person services being shut down and phone lines overwhelm you know something like 70% of people have applied for unemployment haven't received a single check yet this was reported in Fox a couple days ago so this is just a huge problem of access and it's a problem that has been ongoing and really needs to be remedied so for now I think we try to plug in and fill in the resources to help people that would fall through the cracks otherwise but it really is a systemic issue going forward that we'll need to concentrate on thank you so much and Alyssa I'd be interested to hear a little bit more about the partnership between CPD and PPP to make sure that working folks can get you I I'd love to hear about how lawsuits good plug in yeah totally so um this is just like again reiterating everything Jason said but I think even in good times there's a strong disparity on who gets you I um I think we have some data showing that like workers and college-educated people are much people who fall into those categories are much more likely than black and brown workers working in the service economy for example to be able to access the program but I think there's one huge difference which is if you are in a union you are much more likely to access UI than you are in other settings and I think for us the takeaway is if people are in an environment where they feel a lot of solidarity and they have ready access to information and resources people from more disadvantaged and marginalized backgrounds can also get UI so we're trying to do is we have um we're partnering with about six to seven affiliates at this point who are again these organizing groups and what they're doing is it's sort of an interesting new model where we're gonna offer very limited UI services to try to help people get over some of the initial barriers to applying because essentially in some places for example our affiliates a tool in Minnesota most of their members are spanish-speaking and the online application Minnesota is only in English so if you don't have community involvement and helping people get access to UI that's a really core group of people that are not going to be able to get this six hundred dollar week benefit so what we've been doing in particular in New Hampshire and Vermont is our partner rights and democracy has formally partnered with the New Hampshire PPP chapter and that chapters doing incredible work trying to sort of distill really complicated information from the agency and from the federal government into materials that are very accessible for workers and then also for people who organize workers so the PPP chapter is doing that really critical work we've hired an extern who is gonna help staff these virtual UI clinics so people can access to resources but what I think we're doing that is different from the tort of typical legal services model is we are combining it with very strong political education so people can have the opportunity to take action after they receive services but the services are a way to sort of build our base and build a broader grassroots movement that can show up for UI but then also for really critical left priorities like the green New Deal or raising the minimum wage or other things we want to mobilize on the state and local level and then in terms of how law students can get involved I think we're gonna be operating very much through PPP Summer Institute program whether that be hiring externs will be part of that cohort hopefully or sending resources or request the research through that program so if you want to get involved I would strongly advise signing up for the Summer Institute or providing research and a volunteer capacity because we'll largely operating through that mechanism and then the final thing I'd say is there's also incredible law student support that we're getting from folks in New York trying to help make the road New York set up a pilot that can serve their spanish-speaking base and then also we've done a really important work in Minnesota and thank you to Molly for doing this doing outreach to students who want to help support you and there so far there been like sixty law students in Minnesota who have signed on to help support this work so we're just trying to find ways to channel a lot of this energy in a way that supports grassroots organizing thanks so much Alyssa and I also just want to note that if you want to participate in one of our pseudo clinics helping people apply for unemployment insurance you do not need to have any prior experience with that the local providers are providing training so you'll be fully equipped if that's something you wanna help out with so now we're gonna move on to talking about paid leave with your ru so the United States is the only ouais IDI country that does not have a national paid sick leave mandate so workers today are being forced to choose between risking their jobs and risking their lives try you could you tell us about the fight for federal paid leave during the pandemic so what's covered what's missing from federal law and how is the fight for paid leave changed since the pandemic sure so I think the crisis is really like highlighted how glaring that lack of worker protection is and how unique the u.s. is and not being able to have that infrastructure in place already prior to this crisis taking place and it shows also the deficiencies and what the federal government has already passed in the family's first act nearly 54% of workers are not covered because there's already a huge loophole for employers with more than 500 employees and the idea there was that you know this sort of lie around companies would voluntarily sort of provide more generous leave options to their employees and the reality is that this is mostly hurt low-wage workers and companies like Amazon were initially offering poor paid leave policies offering only unpaid leave unless workers had positive diagnosis which were hard to come by which basically meant that workers were being forced to work without while sick and going on or go unpaid that was the alternative and so the New York State AG the city of James has already asked the NLRB to investigate whether Amazon has been violating OSHA and York state whistleblower protections and I'll include the link to that below and there's been a lot of news around Amazon's sort of gross violations of worker safety retaliation against workers who are trying to organize around safety in their workplaces and it's been very well documented so I'll include the links in the chat and then there's also a link that I'll include around which companies are still not offering paid leave but sort of that's like one of the bigger loopholes in the federal measures but there have also been a number of others that have been sort of inserted by the Trump administration and specifically by the Department of Labor in terms of how they issued their final interpretive rulemaking so the the four that I want to highlight and sort of highlight their impact on workers the first is the that the the statute makes sort of an on switch for a work availability requirements Oh denies emergency leave for workers who for workers whose employers do not have any work for them and so you can imagine situations where employees have employers have been shut down as a result of the crisis and workers that were previously employed by these companies don't have access to any sort of emergency leave as a result the second is the DOL definition of health care provider and first responders health care providers and first responders are exempted from the paid leave requirements but what the DOL has done with their definition in their final rule is expanded it to a wide range of employers who are then exempt from providing their employees with protection I'm sort of includes companies that are producing and distributing medical products medical equipment and diagnostic vehicles and also other sort of workers who are employed by medical facilities and so the people being most harmed by that are the low wage workers and manufacturing plants in warehouses in hospitals who you know are being employed in sort of adjacent industries to though to the actual healthcare field and then there's another sort of interpretive role where they sort of made an intermittent leave can only be taken with employers and agreement and a category three prohibits working workers who are not teleworking from actually being able to take intermittent leave so that what that means is basically workers who are caring for a child wouldn't be able to take alternate days off with paid leave and then the last thing that I really want to highlight is the documentation requirements that it imposes on employers or on workers so for paid family leave for example you'd have to provide your child's name their school or care provider and representation if there's no one else suitable who could take care of them during that leave period and all of these sort of adverse interpretations are really impacting one class of workers which is low wage black and brown immigrant workers who are staffed in factories and manufacturing plants and warehouses in health care sector and similar to the the loophole that I mentioned earlier and the investigation against Amazon the AG's office here in New York is also challenging these adverse interpretations under the APA which was good review for my admin law class great yeah it just always shocks me to think about the fact that companies with over 500 employees here the companies with the most resources and the most ability to provide paid leave are exempts um tree can you tell us a little bit more about your work with the paid leave for all coalition how are students helping advocates fight for real pc's sure so the paid leave for all campaign has been mobilizing a lot of legal services organizations that have access to communities that traditionally don't have access to legal information and ensuring that people I'm across the board have access to up-to-date information so a lot of my work and the work of other folks with PP on working with the rapid response team was creating know your rights materials distilling federal registers and DOL guidances on the paid leave measures and ensuring that workers and advocates have access to you know relevant information that's can be used to give you know immediate advice for people who have just very basic questions about what the provisions mean for them and their particular situation and I think what makes this most really challenging is that the crisis is impacting people in very different ways and so it's it's difficult often to sort of distill a complex you know federal measure that doesn't quite you know cover a lot of people and and providing accurate information about who is and isn't covered so a lot of our work focused on sort of creating know your rights materials creating a fact sheet for State Department's of Labor I'm ensuring that they have guidance for their employers and employees that fall into their guidance that's really helpful um Thank You Cynthia I'd love to hear a little bit more about your work on non-competes could you give us a brief overview of how non-compete agreements affect workers and how they'll affect people during the condeming sure so they'll start by saying non-compete clauses are literally everywhere in the economy virtually every occupation and virtually every level of it the only real exception is law lawyer it savvy and smart enough to protect ourselves to meet coercive contracts but leaving us aside yeah they're everywhere the survey by the Economic Policy Institute that was published in December found that about 60 as many as 60 million 6-0 million workers are found by non-competes at president which is the amounts to about half the American workforce and so what non-competes do is they restrict where a person can work after he or she leaves her current job so for instance if you're a home health aide found by a non-compete clause this contract may say for 18 months after leaving current employer you cannot work at the occult health aide anywhere else in your city community the broader metropolitan area and so the practical effect of non-compete clauses are until the workers like once you leave you can either move you know uproot your family kind of your social ties find work elsewhere find work in another field or accept extended unemployment basic lly for the duration of your non-compete clause and you know all three options to varying degrees are very unappealing and implausible you most people don't have the luxury of taking off 18 months to wait out a non-compete clause and so the practical effect is non-compete through find workers at plates prevent workers from leaving for a better job or starting a business and you know non-competes inflict harm even when they're not enforced in court you know employers rarely actually take their worker to court and say you're bound by a non-compete you shall not work for our arrival they tend to sort of have more comprehensive chilling effects workers tend to comply with them as a matter of course and survey evidence is found that few workers question the legality or enforceability of their non-compete let alone consult a lawyer about them so even apart from enforceability non-competes have a real deterrent effect on worker mobility and you know we really need to understand these contracts as a tool of worker control the justifications for them or really quite specious you know employee employers talk about trade secrets other valuable intangible for one thing they have an entire body of law great secret law to protect these intangibles and you know the expense they're worried about workers leaving they have a simple way of retaining them pay them or offer promotions treat them with fairness and dignity on the job the non-competes are hardly the only way of ensuring work the loyalty and commitment and so what are so the tangible harms of non-compete you know there's been a raft of empirical research the past year show that non-compete wages lower wages reduce wage growth depressed depressed formation of new businesses there's been also abundance and a good little evidence showing that workers bound by non-competes are often crafted abusive discriminatory otherwise toxic work environment so there's also an important sector and racial discrimination angle to not compete so even before the crisis I think it's clear that these are pernicious contracts that they should be outlawed by legislation or regulation anything the crisis has only made their homes even more salient I think there are two groups that are likely to be harmed most severely you know the first is frontline workers jurors nurses other health providers as well as people working in food distribution food production it's so you know even under the best of circumstances it's very hard to speak up on the job you know people fear retaliation including and up to termination and is especially true for workers who are not a union president announcer about 90% of the US workforce you know non-compete only raised the consequences from speaking out on the job so if you're bound by a non-compete you may not only lose your job but be subject to extended unemployment thanks to your non-compete clause so it raises the cost of speaking up about negligence by your laws recklessness and I think these are all risks that are especially salient right now with the health and food systems under great stress I think the second group that will be severely affected or nearly 30 million workers who've been laid off since the start of this crisis you know the most acute phase of the crisis ends people will start looking for work again and I think for millions of them and often people be they're paying over that they look for work that people may be afraid of litigation from their old employer they may be hit with cease and desist letters saying you know think twice before applying for a new job don't forget about your non-compete clause anything on top of that employers will have the privilege of being extraordinarily selective in who they consider it hire and the existence of a non-compete clause will be a quick way for them to screen a boy eat and even before the crisis we had heard stories of our employers sort of asking candidates are you subject to a non-compete clause and using that as a way of filtering applications that they receive so this crisis has only made non-competes more salient it highlighted how we need a legislative or regulatory ban on that pretty I see a question in the chat about whether any states have model legislation on non-compete clauses do you have an answer spot so imperfectly a number of states have enacted legislation in the past few years restricting the use of not Massachusetts has passed legislation Washington's passed legislation and in California for more than a century has held that non-competes are unenforceable in court unfortunately none of these states performance will constitute models in my opinion so they have important limitation so the case of Washington State they only apply for only cover workers making up to $100,000 so a large segment that the labor force in Washington state including tens of thousands of Amazon software engineers are not entitled to protection under this law similarly in Massachusetts there are income cut-offs and that restrict who is protected so I think the you know these means-tested protections are an important and significant improvement over what existed previously but I think they fall short of all we need which is a universal ban on on feeds that protect all workers in all occupations so do you mind telling us how law students are plugging into this fight and how more people can get involved sure so we've been working with PPP for more than a year now sort of trying to organize and publicize around this issue and so we're building on an existing partnership to just provide some context more than a year ago the open markets Institute as part of a broader labor and public interest coalition petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to ban non-competes through a rulemaking and you know we've used this project as you know an important electril exercise as well as an important coalition building project and you know realistically we didn't think the Trump FTC was going to take us up on our call but we thought that this could be a day one initiative for a democratic administration you know almost certainly a very president Sanders our president Warren and possibly even under a president cited so we were kind of operating under this framework of let's help shape the agenda for the next administration I think the crisis has changed that and I I think has opened up the possibility for Congress to act and sort of pass legislation banning non-compete so the possibility of a sort of quick legislative fix is really the bird and so we're working with students including PPP members to sort of highlight the crisis connection of non-compete we don't want to say that this is just a general progressive objective we want to show that it's important to act against non-compete service crisis so we're working with PPP members to collect stories from health care providers and other frontline workers showing that you know this is really hurting workers here and now it's preventing work there speaking up about unfairness languages that general recklessness by their employers and furthermore that many laid off workers or subject to non-compete clauses that worried about looking for a job these course of contract so we're working with students to sort of highlight the connection that prices and made clear to those members of Congress and policymakers that this is something that has to be addressed immediately it's not just part of a general progressive wish list we believe it's important for Congress act now and put it on its agenda for the next rescue package and so we're just in the early stages of doing that outreach but you know working with students it's really an important way of talking with workers they're advocates and representatives started putting the story aids off the radar and members of Congress and other policymakers great thank you so much and you know I really appreciated what you said some deep about how the crisis is driven home and made even more urgent a lot of the firms of corporate power that we were fighting before this crisis with that in mind I'd love to hear a little bit more from try you and ELISA about your work fighting for a separate region could you know both of you were organizing around this before the pandemic could you share a little bit about why ending perpetration was a priority for CPD and for PPP I can start unless you want to start Rio great okay um so I think forced arbitration I think what Sandeep was illustrating is that it really it's a process in which people are forced to sign away their right to take their bosses to port and are said shunted into a very privatized system of adjudication that leaves them with literally no remedy like the win-loss rates in arbitration are extremely poor and the fact and there's so many barriers to accessing the arbitration system that very few people pursue their claims so effectively how it operates it's a get-out-of-jail-free card for employers essentially who put these into their causes and over the past few years helped by the Supreme Court which is sort of rubber stamp these causes a large number of corporations like Chipotle Olive Garden and and other employers are inserting these clauses into the contracts of low-wage workers so that's primarily been our focus is trying to figure out ways to make these contracts to increase enforcement um because what effectively forced arbitration does it is leaves a gaping hole in labor law enforcement because people cannot bring their claims and vindicate their rights so effectively what we've been doing is working off a California bill called the private attorneys general Act we're trying to create an enforcement ecosystem in which workers can bring claims on behalf of the state and the theory behind that is because the state has not signed a forced arbitration clause workers can continue to pursue their claims against their employers and collect penalties and what those penalties do is first they deter corporations from engaging in massive wage theft because with forced arbitration it's otherwise profitable for them to do that because they know there won't be any enforcement and then some of the penalties go back to community organizations which will again spur organizing and more know your rights and enforcement of the law so for us it's about um using this infrastructure in order to build up sort of long-standing community enforcement power and deputizing the state's power to enforce law into the hands of workers and their advocates to fight sort of corporate malfeasance but that is defended using forced arbitration that was a super comprehensive explanation Thank You Alyssa I try did you want to add anything more about the work that the my UPPP chapter was doing how the pandemic has Illustrated to you the important spending force arbitration yeah sure I think there's I think it's important to highlight first that as Alissa mentioned it is a very pervasive lis used in our workplace and I think in particular against low-wage restaurant workers but I think just in general this problems affecting like 656 percent of private sector employees including 64% who are earning less than $13 an hour 59 percent of our black workers and 58% who are women workers so you really see a disproportionate impact and in who this is actually affecting and that's sort of where a PPP really is coming at this problem but also in a second way in the sense that a lot of us are entering a legal field in which we ourselves will be subject to forced arbitration clauses and may be responsible for drafting and being responsible for such provisions so trying to really weaponize the legal field against the use of these practices I mean this is just taken to heighten importance during this pandemic when we're thinking about who's most impacted by the crisis itself and who ultimately will be disadvantaged by sort of worker in justices so this is as much a fight about ensuring that workers have rights to paid leave during the pandemic as it is to ensuring that workers have protection of the justice system enforcing those new rights as well so I mentioned earlier that the family's first act has a glaring loophole on the 500 plus employers loophole but there's actually a second one like the legislation does guarantee private rights of action and so employers can be held liable for double the compensation if they're failing to provide emergency leave and then they can also be if they're if they're found to have retaliated against employees they are also subject to hefty penalties but the problem is that these forced arbitration clauses and what's indeed mentioned earlier with the class action waivers or collective action waivers ninety-eight percent of workers are gonna abandon those claims so when we're talking about sort of the impact of this crisis we can look not just at who's being protected by new legislation but how are people actually able to take those enforce their rights in court so there's two ways in which workers are being disadvantaged and I think are one of our colleagues on the coalition who is the scattered fellow at Nell Hugh Barron he wrote a very good uh Pat about sort of this other glaring loophole in the federal legislation and I think just another thing to highlight beyond the immediate impact our immediate future of securing paid leave while people while the country is under lockdown and there's also a greater concern in the fight against forced arbitration that when the economy does open back up and workers are rehired they might be forced to sign employment contracts with arbitration clauses or collective action waivers where none were existed before so we might see a rise in these pervasive contracts you know course of contracts which is why we need national measures like the forced arbitration justice repeal acts on the fair act and sort of that's where this fight looks like it's headed yeah thanks everyone this was all incredibly helpful and it's been really exciting to hear all about the work that you're doing the work that you're doing in partnership and ways that law students can engage in this and try to mitigate harm and be part of fighting for a better systemic future I want to spend the last couple minutes talking a little bit about the roles and responsibilities of lawyers and law students during this crisis I'd love to hear about you know what students can do to help with any of the causes that you're working on and what kinds of systemic changes you think we all need to be fighting for to keep Rock line workers safe and keep working families afloat so anyone can start sure I'm happy to start I think um so my role is primarily working with non lawyers who are doing the organizing work on the ground so I think and for the students who will be participating in that work I think the most important thing is just to be really flexible um about what about what you weren't needed to do because essentially like for example our affiliate one PA had a bunch of workers we're striking in a grocery store and they needed me to write a press release and I just did that and I just like think what being a lawyer in this time means just showing up for organizers showing up for the like of their striking workers at a warehouse and they need specific things from you just like putting your ego aside and just like delivering them what they can happily and I think the other thing is like when we're doing policy work like trying to think through what are the ways in which our we can lend our legal expertise to facilitate organizing and to facilitate base building and that's about making materials really accessible it's about following the leads of organizers on what they need from you and when and in what format so I think just sort of like taking a back seat to the people doing the grassroots work is how I'm trying to fill this position but again I'm only one year out from law school so I'm still learning what it's like to be a lawyer in this profession I'd love to hear from some of the students about the work that you felt has been particularly impactful and that you've been especially excited about yeah I can speak on that um just echo what Alissa it's already said that I think this crisis has really highlighted the need for movement lawyering and I know that can be s rt of a you know a concept that's not well defined but I think really a time to be a non-lawyer in some ways and sort of be responsive to what communities need most right now and I think that that's what lens PPP is Rapid Response structure some credit is that it's really directed by legal organizations or by community partners that are I'm doing the organizing work and responding directly to communities and lawyers are taking back seats and you know taking the lead in direction from the people who are most immediately affected and I think in that light I have been most excited by the work I've been doing with coalition with Empire Act I think it's given me a lot of perspective on how I want to be a lawyer and how I want to engage with this profession and I think that this crisis is an important time for sort of reconsider what that role is thanks everyone so with that in mind I know we're gonna gap at the end of our time so I wanted to take another second to plug the Summer Institute like Molly said we are looking for a wide range of people who can help in a wide range of ways we're looking for people who are looking to work part-time or full-time because their summer jobs have been cut we're looking for volunteers you can help out part-time we are looking for and we're looking for volunteers supervising attorneys who can help students do this urgently needed work just for a couple hours a week and so if you're able to help we want your help and we're willing to work with you to figure out how you can help in the way that is the most effective for you and meets whatever you know needs you have around your time of the crisis so we really would encourage everyone to get involved you too could be on a webinar like this talking about how you're helping folks get paid leave and unemployment insurance so please join up and if you have any questions feel free to email any of us and we'd be happy to chat all right can we just give a round of applause and thanks to everyone who presented I guess applause it's hard over zoom but I really appreciate all of the work that you're doing and the time that you took to share it you