BALDLY ADMITTED: Why businesses want consumers and employees forced into arbitration (Answer: Because it's a stacked deck against consumers and employees, and businesses know it.)

In this this recent Orange County Register article about California’s equal pay rules, one local [employer-side] labor lawyer explains that he advises his clients to make their employees sign arbitration agreements, thereby preventing them from being able to sue if/when they have a legal dispute over their wages.

But here’s where he brazenly admits that things are tilted in his favor:

“People question whether arbitration tends to favor employers,” the attorney told attendees at a recent human resources conference. “I believe they do. I use the same arbitrators over and over, and they get paid when I pick them. They know where their bread and butter comes from.”

In other words, he is telling employers: Get your employees to sign away their right to a jury trial so that you can play fast and loose with a law you don’t like. And if you do have to go into arbitration, don’t worry because this arbitrator knows who pays his bill.

(Hat tip to Consumerist.)