Docs shared by tech giants in response to questions from Congress show few customers, employees, or contractors bother to challenge the firms in arbitration
it's a rigged system that allows them to systematically escape accountability for cheating workers and consumers. Google contractors, for example, have initiated just *three* arbitration claims in the last FIVE YEARS. https://twitter.com/... Jennifer Bennett / @bennjennett : “This is especially true among the tech giants, where arbitration frameworks are leveraged to reinforce market power.” Great piece by @ddayen! https://prospect.org/... Terri Gerstein / @terrigerstein : Forced arbitration lets big corporations off the hook for all kinds of wrongdoing. Almost no one files arb. claims against them. Check out this piece by @ddayen in @theprospect. #endforcedarbitration https://prospect.org/... David Dayen / @ddayen : I have a look at a rare disclosure from tech companies about the number of arbitration cases filed against them, and the rarity of them kind of proves that arbitration suppresses claims: https://prospect.org/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This piece is the early data point in an arc that later bent hard against forced arbitration. At the time, disclosures to Congress showed the system working exactly as critics like Jennifer Bennett and Terri Gerstein described: Google had ended mandatory arbitration for employees in its March 2019 policy change, but contractors and temporary staff were left inside it — and filed almost nothing (three contractor claims in five years).
What changed next was the discovery of volume. Mass-arbitration filers like Keller Lenkner and FairShake weaponized the fee structure itself, flooding companies with thousands of demands at a time, which is what pushed Amazon first to rewrite its terms after more than 75,000 Echo-user demands and then to abandon customer arbitration altogether. The near-silence Dayen documented in 2019 turned out to be the calm before the cost bomb.
First-order effects
- Google's contractors remain locked out of its employee carve-out, and the three-claims-in-five-years figure gives Congress concrete evidence that arbitration functions as a suppression mechanism for non-employee labor.
- The disclosures hand advocates like Bennett and Gerstein a documented baseline they can cite when arguing arbitration frameworks reinforce market power rather than resolve disputes.
Second-order effects
- Plaintiff-side firms invert the economics: if each unchallenged claim carries filing fees, mass filing converts the company's own arbitration shield into an escalating cost liability, forcing defendants to buy their way out via policy changes.
- Companies facing mass demands must choose between absorbing fee exposure or conceding court access — Amazon chose concession, setting a precedent every other consumer-facing platform has to price against.
Third-order effects
- If mass filing keeps working, forced arbitration becomes viable only where claimants are fragmented individuals — meaning collective action by workers and consumers, not regulators, is currently doing the accountability work Congress was probing.
- A pattern of corporate retreat from arbitration clauses under fee pressure strengthens the legislative case for restricting mandatory arbitration outright, shifting the debate from 'does anyone use it?' to 'why do companies only keep it when victims can't afford to?'
The trend: Forced arbitration is collapsing as a shield wherever claimants can organize into mass filings, converting a private-dispute system into a pricing problem that companies escape only by surrendering court access.