Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
DoorDash contractors have turned a forced arbitration clause in their contract against their employer, as a federal judge has ordered DoorDash to arbitrate 5,010 labor disputes, potentially costing the company millions in arbitration fees (via Quartz). And in a rich bit of irony, DoorDash essentially brought this situation onto itself.
The DoorDash workers originally sought arbitration because they felt DoorDash violated federal and California labor law and wanted to settle the dispute. DoorDash argued it was under no obligation to pay the fees needed to arbitrate those thousands of disputes.
But DoorDash also originally hoped to dismiss a pending class-action case about the same dispute by arguing that the workers had a duty to…