(COMMON DREAMS) Andrea Germanos, May 23, 2018 — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday dealt a blow to worker rights, saying that employers can bar their employees from banding together to challenge workplace abuses including wage theft and sexual harassment.

MSNBC host and legal analyst Ari Melber summed up the 5-4 decision (pdf) by tweeting: “Supreme Court rules that you have the right to your day in court, unless a corporation effectively makes you give up that right.”

Political activist Zephyr Teachout, meanwhile, said the decision “is terrible news for workers in America,” as it makes “it harder for employees to get a fair hearing when they are screwed.”

When employers mandate arbitration clauses, employees must act as individuals to challenge alleged workplace abuses, and are thus barred from gaining strength in numbers through class action suits to challenge corporate power. In the cases before the high court, employers had argued they had the right to impose such contracts under the Federal Arbitration Act, while employees argued they had the right to take collective action under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

Celine McNicholas, director of labor law and policy at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), responded by explaining the real and specific impact the court’s ruling will have on workers:

These agreements bar access to the courts for all types of employment-related claims, including those based on the Fair Labor Standards Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and the Family Medical Leave Act. This means that a worker who is not paid fairly, discriminated against, or sexually harassed, is forced into a process that overwhelmingly favors the employer—and forced to manage this process alone, even though these issues are rarely confined to one single worker.

via ‘Terrible News for Workers’ as Supreme Court Makes It Harder for Them to Fight Back When ‘Screwed’ by Employer.