On May 21, 2018, the Supreme Court announced, in a 5-4 party-line vote, that it's valid for employers to require employees to waive their right to any recovery on future wage claims, whether in court or in arbitration, as a condition for being hired or keeping their jobs. (Although employees can have an arbitration, employers can set procedures that prevent employees from recovering any money no matter who wins.) This decision essentially leaves it to the free market whether employers will be able to opt out of wage laws completely, but many job seekers and employees aren't informed enough about the issue to be able to bargain effectively. Most job listings don't include this information about the employer.
The project idea is a web directory of employers, with answers to the following questions:
Does the employer require employees to waive the right to enforce payment of wages under their contracts?
Does the employer require employees to waive the right to recover for wage discrimination based on protected categories such as race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, age, pregnancy, or familial status?
The project could potentially include a browser extension to add wage waiver information to job listings on the web.
Who will benefit (directly and indirectly) from your project?
Employment agreements for an estimated 25 million Americans already contain waivers of wage claims. Many of these employees signed the agreement under the assumption they'd never be enforceable. After the Supreme Court's ruling, at least one law firm released a product to automate the process of obtaining waivers from employees, so many more people will probably be impacted soon.
What other resources/tools are currently serving the same need? How does your project set itself apart?
There's no such directory yet, as far as I can find.
Where can we find any research/data available/articles?
Data acquisition is the biggest problem. There are some public court filings available that reveal some employers with wage waiver contracts. An option is to ask users to report waiver contracts they've encountered, or to share their own employment agreements, but there are privacy concerns and participation might be low.
What are the next steps (validation, research, coding, design)?
Design and data acquisition.
How can we contact you outside of Github(list social media or places you're present)?
On Open Austin Slack.
Project management
Checklist for NEW ideas :baby:
Hey, you're official! You're now part of the growing civic hacking community in Austin. Here's a few things to get started (a couple you've probably already done).
[x] Create this idea issue
[x] Flesh out the who, where, and what questions above
[ ] Start the conversation about this idea on Slack Replace this link to the #general channel with your project's preferred channel.
Checklist for ACTIVE projects :fire:
Let's get this project started! When this idea starts taking off, the Projects Core Team will start helping this project's lead(s) out with project management and connecting you to resources you may need. To get there, please complete and check off the following:
[x] Post an update at least once a month to this issue. Use BASEDEF for ideas, but it's ok even if your update is just "nothing new happened this month" or "we saw a small increase in traffic to our app this month". If there's no activity for two months, that's no problem, life happens. We'll just label this as backlog so others know you'll get back to it when you have the time. If nobody hears from you at all in more than two months, we may mark it as abandoned so that others can pick up this idea and run with it.
[ ] Create a README file in your project repository. This file should help newcomers understand what your project is, why it's important, and kinds of help you're looking for.
[ ] Create issues to describe each task that you plan to do or need help with and how a contributor can get started on that task. You might start and stop a lot, so consider issues as your to-do list.
This will make it easier for you to manage your github repo access. People on a team have the same level of access. Admin access will allow your trusted contributors to make changes as needed.
You can remove and add people to your team as needed.
Note: You can also allow collaborators outside of your team and give them more limited access.
[ ] Create a user group in Slack so you can "@" your core contributors all at once, without bothering other people who use the Slack channel. You'll need permission from a Slack admin, so just mention @leadership on Slack to get this set up.
[ ] Create a Google Drive, Dropbox, or other cloud storage to share larger files. Github and Data.World are good for code and data, respectively, especially when you need version control. But they're not good for very large files, documentation, articles, etc. A cloud storage option will allow you to easily share, create, and collaborate on documents with your team and help organize ideas and thoughts.
Doing this early on can help your team stay organized and to onboard new contributors who wouldn't have access to files you all have shared over email.
Checklist for FEATURED Projects :tada:
To have your project FEATURED on Open-Austin.org, complete the following documentation. In past projects, well-documented featured projects have more contributions than other projects.
[ ] Create an issue on the open-austin.github.io repo with the title Add [my project] to projects page. An Open Austin leader will review this issue and post your project :balloon:
[ ] Tell the City of Austin. If your idea is in a shareable format and can benefit people around the city, go to that site and follow the instructions on the bottom of the page to showcase your work there.
If you get stuck at any point, feel free to reach out to the leadership team on Slack by adding @leadership to your message. We're here to help you make real changes to our city.
What problem are you trying to solve?
On May 21, 2018, the Supreme Court announced, in a 5-4 party-line vote, that it's valid for employers to require employees to waive their right to any recovery on future wage claims, whether in court or in arbitration, as a condition for being hired or keeping their jobs. (Although employees can have an arbitration, employers can set procedures that prevent employees from recovering any money no matter who wins.) This decision essentially leaves it to the free market whether employers will be able to opt out of wage laws completely, but many job seekers and employees aren't informed enough about the issue to be able to bargain effectively. Most job listings don't include this information about the employer.
The project idea is a web directory of employers, with answers to the following questions:
The project could potentially include a browser extension to add wage waiver information to job listings on the web.
Who will benefit (directly and indirectly) from your project?
Employment agreements for an estimated 25 million Americans already contain waivers of wage claims. Many of these employees signed the agreement under the assumption they'd never be enforceable. After the Supreme Court's ruling, at least one law firm released a product to automate the process of obtaining waivers from employees, so many more people will probably be impacted soon.
What other resources/tools are currently serving the same need? How does your project set itself apart?
There's no such directory yet, as far as I can find.
Where can we find any research/data available/articles?
Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, the May 21 Supreme Court decision. LexPredict ContraxSuite is an open source library for analyzing contracts. The training data includes employment contracts.
What help do you need now?
Data acquisition is the biggest problem. There are some public court filings available that reveal some employers with wage waiver contracts. An option is to ask users to report waiver contracts they've encountered, or to share their own employment agreements, but there are privacy concerns and participation might be low.
What are the next steps (validation, research, coding, design)?
Design and data acquisition.
How can we contact you outside of Github(list social media or places you're present)?
On Open Austin Slack.
Project management
Checklist for NEW ideas :baby:
Hey, you're official! You're now part of the growing civic hacking community in Austin. Here's a few things to get started (a couple you've probably already done).
Checklist for ACTIVE projects :fire:
Let's get this project started! When this idea starts taking off, the Projects Core Team will start helping this project's lead(s) out with project management and connecting you to resources you may need. To get there, please complete and check off the following:
backlogso others know you'll get back to it when you have the time. If nobody hears from you at all in more than two months, we may mark it asabandonedso that others can pick up this idea and run with it.Checklist for FEATURED Projects :tada:
To have your project FEATURED on Open-Austin.org, complete the following documentation. In past projects, well-documented featured projects have more contributions than other projects.
Add [my project] to projects page. An Open Austin leader will review this issue and post your project :balloon:If you get stuck at any point, feel free to reach out to the leadership team on Slack by adding @leadership to your message. We're here to help you make real changes to our city.