You have to be a bit careful with things like this. There is an implicit assumption that this is a pure one way play. In other words that there is no recompense for waiving the right to court arbitration.<p>Now, I don&#x27;t happen to know the ins and outs of the pre-crash Bear contracts for traders, but from my experience of similar contracts in similar institutions, I tended to get amply compensated for the various things I waived my rights to.<p>There are cases, mine included, where both parties signed a contract with full knowledge and were able to walk away if they were unhappy. I&#x27;m going to guess that, as much as we all regularly feel sorry for the plight of investment bankers, this was likely true in this case too.<p>That&#x27;s not to say I have any issue with employee protection in general. It&#x27;s hugely important. But there are most definitely cases where the relationship is not necessarily one sided.