A New Direction for American Labor Law: Individual Autonomy and the Compulsory Arbitration of Individual Employment Rights

This article examines the decline of industrial pluralism—where collective bargaining and union-based negotiation historically governed American labor relations—and the concurrent rise of statutorily created individual employment rights such as Title VII, ADEA, OSHA, ERISA, and ADA among others . It argues that although legislatures and courts have established new workplace protections for individual employees, the federal judiciary has undermined this progress by directing employment disputes toward compulsory arbitration. This shift reflects a broader legal transformation: not from collective rights to individually litigated rights, but from collective autonomy to compulsory individual arbitration. The paper explores the implications of this transition for American labor law and worker protections using relevant case examples.