“It’s now easier for alleged joint employers to compel arbitration”

JD Supra has published this article by Philip Bruce of McAfee & Taft, discussing the Tenth Circuit’s decision in Reeves v. Enterprise Products Partners, Inc., in which the court held that an arbitration agreement between a staffing agency and its employee served to preclude the employee from bringing judicial claims against the third party company to which he was assigned to work. As the article explains, staffing companies inclusion of arbitration provisions with class action waivers, made it “increasingly difficult for plaintiffs to file to class action lawsuits. To get around this, more plaintiffs were suing the companies that used the staffing agencies and did not have arbitration agreements with the workers, arguing that they were either a direct employer or joint employer.” The Tenth Circuit’s decision, according to the article, will substantially restrict, if not completely foreclose, this litigation tactic.