briefly noted

Al Franken questioning a Halliburton/KBR attorney after the vote on his recent amendment prohibiting government contracts from being issued to companies that prevent their employees from suing their employers if they have been raped or assaulted at work.
Al still needs money to pay for that stupid recount. Get to it. (via Purns, joshruben)

I’m currently associate producing Hot Coffee, a soon-to-be feature documentary film that addresses this very issue of public access to the courts - something I’ve always believed was a fundamental right, but soon learned can just as easily be manipulated and signed away.

I wrote the following about this case, on our film’s blog but to recap the case Senator Al Franken (D-MN) is addressing involves a young women named Jamie Leigh Jones, an ex KBR/Halliburton employee who was drugged and brutally gang-raped by seven Halliburton contractors in Iraq in 2005.

However, Jamie, like many young 20-year-old-girls before her, did not read the fine print of her employee contract with KBR/Halliburton, which contained a clause that waived her rights to a jury trial if in the event criminal misconduct was committed. Private arbitration was her only option, which protected KBR/Halliburton from a potentially very public and expensive lawsuit, and with the company choosing the arbitrator.

To this day, Jones has waited more than four years for her day in court. At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) estimated that at least 30 million workers have unknowingly signed employee contracts and waived their constitutional rights to have their civil rights claims resolved by a jury.

Our film crew interviewed Sen. Franken who is sponsoring an amendment to the arbitration act as well as Republican Congressman Ted Poe, who was instrumental in getting Jones out of Iraq. In addition, we took to the street to ask people about their understanding of mandatory arbitration.

As expected, the results were alarming.

Source: purns