Once we reach the point that virtually EVERY company requires these mandatory binding arbitration agreements (and we are getting close to that point!), it is hard to argue it is voluntary, because the employee/consumer really has no alternative.

Good question. It’s an equally good question why the dominant liberal-left viewpoint in labor relations generally supports arbitration in the unionized setting, but thinks it’s shockingly terrible when adopted by consent of both parties in a nonunion setting.

Start with the question of what is voluntary. What I take as Jack’s view is that an agreement to arbitrate which you’ve signed twenty times at intervals over the course of your employment, initialing each box about how the terms have been explained to you, is *not* in the least voluntary, while a town’s being forced by some labor law to accept arbitration with police or fire employees *is* voluntary, or at least close enough for government work. If you take consent seriously, the first category will appear a legitimate choice people can make. Sometimes employers genuinely consent to union arbitration as well, which is why there is no general libertarian critique of it, but in other cases the law ties their hands in various ways and there is no way to understand how the device works without taking into account that fact.

In both cases, if you see someone being prodded to enter an agreement about their workplace whose terms they wouldn’t want to live with, the best course is to urge them not to sign. That’s what I do when a friend is thinking of signing onto an otherwise good job with an unreasonable non-disparagement or non-compete or arbitration clause. It’s also what I do when an employer, such as a county government and its taxpayers, is being urged to sign onto a public employee arbitration measure it is likely to regret.