Popular myth suggests that comedians, who use biting humor to critically assess and reveal our foibles, would make darn good public officials. Al Franken, the man of a thousand recounts, proves the myth has legs.
At a Senate hearing on an amendment to preclude the government from hiring contractors who impose mandatory binding arbitration on their employees on issues such as sexual assault, Franken stared down a lawyer for Halliburton/KKR, who had taken the position that it was done for the good of the employees to provide them with an expedited means of addressing their grievances, suggesting that employees who were raped did better with private arbitration than they would in court.
Though not a lawyer, Senator Franken has the opportunity to examine witnesses at the hearing, and he makes surprisingly good use of his authority.
No, Al wasn’t very funny. But then, the gang rape of Jamie Leigh Jones wasn’t very funny either. Nor was her being held captive in a shipping container under armed guard. Nor is her 4 years of fighting Halliburton’s refusal to face the consequenes in court. There just isn’t much funny about any of this. In fact, the whole thing is pretty sick.
Try as I might, I cannot find a rationale, a love of business so strong and deep, that could justify supporting Halliburton’s efforts to insulate itself from public scrutiny, to deny Jones the ability to seek redress in court. Of course, I similarly find Halliburton’s handling of its employees in Iraq, in fostering the atmosphere where a female employee is gang raped and then the assault in concealed, to be incomprehensible.
There are lines that should never be crossed, and this is one of them. To argue that a corporation should be able to impose a condition of employment that would preclude someone gang raped from going to court is offensive. Perhaps this doesn’t strike the Halliburton folks as sufficiently beyond the pale to warrant the tossing of its contract of adhesion requiring arbitration, but it does Al Franken. And me too. There’s just nothing funny about what happened to Jamie Leigh Jones, and nothing funny about the fact that it happened on the public dime.
H/T Jim Walker via Rick Horowitz
Discover more from Simple Justice
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I’m not, generally, a fan of Al Franken. I am, though, unabashedly a fan of how he’s conducted himself in this, and not just because he’s right on the issue, although that doesn’t hurt any.
Disclosure: I represent Oregon National Guard soldiers on injury claims against KBR for toxic exposures to sodium dichromate while they protected KBR workers in So. Iraq. So it’s fair to say I have a point of view.
Mandatory arbitration is one of the great outrages of the civil justice system. There are several other features of mandatory arbitration that make it a fun house hall of mirrors. Usually, costs are exorbitant as compared to filing a civil case in court. Often remedies are stripped (attorney fees, emotional distress damages, punitive damages). The topper is that at least one institutional providers (NAF) apparently has actual undisclosed interests on cases it arbitrates. Other providers (AAA and JAMS) may well have institutional biases in servicing their subscriber clients. It’s a fake system of justice that Sen. Franken is taking on.
Amazing how well the good Senator from Minnesota gets it. Nice to know that he has the chops along with his commitment to social and economic justice issues
Al Franken proved his mettle by taking on the outrageous and demonstrably immoral Halliburton/KBR, the junk yard dog of Bush/Cheney. That promises a career for Senator Franken that will support an idea that the spirit of the Constitution implies and must be revived, that of justice for all.