Are they invested in law firms? Because that's the logical explanation for taking up this silly cause.
a) biased in favor of the company
b) For lower income workers costs much more than the potential "win" for getting back what you are owed - the typical case being stolen wages, that are often less then the employee born cost of arbitration.
c) They prohibit the constitutional right toclass action law suits - combined with (b) this makes mass already illegal exploitation essentially free: it's just not cost effective for victims to to individually litigate their minor costs.
Companies say it's purely about efficiency, but it is absolutely about making it uneconomical for employees that are victims of illegal actions to receive compensation. See the recent case where uber is trying to avoid the arbitration they required (https://www.reuters.com/article/legal-us-otc-uber/forced-int...), and chipotle trying to avoid the forced arbitration when their employees actually enacted it: https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-chipo...
Costs of arbitration after borne almost entirely by the company. This makes it cheaper to bring a complaint. But it creates a conflict of interest where the company never loses. The arbitrator is paid by the Corp, so if the arbitrator rules against them, the Corp will just pick a different arbitrator.
This ignores that if you are a low wage employee subject to this kind of contract you are unlikely to be able to afford the initial retention costs.
My inclination would be to allow the arbiter to be selected by the employee. If companies really do believe arbitration is fair they should have no problem with that.
Uber and Chipotle are two examples of arbitration working as intend by employers.
https://www.reuters.com/article/legal-us-otc-uber/forced-int... (Forced into arbitration, 12,500 drivers claim Uber won’t pay fees to launch cases)
https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-chipo... (Chipotle may have outsmarted itself by blocking thousands of employee lawsuits over wage theft)
In the both cases it's clear that they never intended to go into arbitration, and just assumed the amount of time required vs. the reward would not be worthwhile. The moment that the bluff was called they immediately tried to avoid the "efficient" option: Uber isn't paying the arbitration fees, chipotle tried to lawyer their way out of what They chose to force on their employees.
Come think of it, is there anything left that doesn't require arbitration?
About the only way out seems to be to have no business dealings with the company. If an airline drops a huge chunk of blue ice through my roof, and I haven't used that airline, then I guess I can still sue them. This isn't much comfort, because nearly every situation in which I might want to sue a company would involve doing business with the company and thus being subject to an arbitration agreement.
See, I can make unfounded, uncharitable comments too.