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A new survey shows that nearly 60 percent of likely voters oppose mandatory arbitration clauses in employment and consumer contracts.

Mandatory arbitration clauses require a consumer or employee to agree to settle any disputes in arbitration, which is when a private third party reviews and settles the dispute. In doing so, individuals waive his or her right to sue, to participate in a class action lawsuit, or to appeal.  These clauses are often hidden in the fine print of contracts, such as cell phone and employment contracts.

The Fair Arbitration Now Coalition says that mandatory arbitration denies Americans their Seventh Amendment right to trial in civil disputes. According to the survey, many Americans are unaware that their right to a trial is taken from them when they sign contracts with mandatory arbitration clauses.

The surveyalso found that 59 percent of likely voters support the Arbitration Fairness Act. The Act specifies that mandatory arbitration clauses cannot be applied to employment, consumer, or franchise disputes. It also prohibits mandatory arbitration in disputes arising under any statute intended to protect civil rights.

The Employee Free Choice Act, which is currently under consideration by Congress, is a bill that would make it easier for all workers to join unions by giving them the option to choose how to form a union, either by ballot or by getting a majority of employees to sign a union-authorization card.

If passed, the bill would be particularly good for African Americans, who join unions because union jobs provide better wages and health care benefits than non-union jobs.  Black workers who are in unions earn 28 percent more than non-unionized Black workers and are approximately 16 percent more likely to have health insurance benefits than non-unionized Black workers.

In addition, unions have historically played a critical role in the upward mobility of African Americans and they still help to provide African Americans with better wages and healthcare benefits than they would get with non-union jobs.

The Employee Free Choice Act is supported by LCCR and other civil rights organizations, who point to a long history of collaboration between the labor movement and the civil rights movement.  Today is the anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was killed while in Memphis, Tenn., to organize sanitation workers in 1968.

"Dr. King was assassinated helping to lead a struggle of sanitation workers to win the freedom to form a union and bargain collectively with their employer. The struggle of those workers continues today as Congress works to pass the Employee Free Choice Act to improve the lives of working men and women regardless of race, color or creed," said Benjamin Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP.

On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City, an event that galvanized the city and sparked a movement that led to legislation that improved factory safety and workers' protections.

Nearly 150 workers died in the fire, unable to escape from the building due to locked exits and a broken fire escape. It was the most tragic industrial disaster in the history of New York City, and was the worst workplace disaster in the city until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Company manufactured women's blouses, which were called "shirtwaists" or simply "waists" at the time. Most of the company's 600 workers were female immigrants from Eastern Europe, Italy and Germany, some as young as 12, who were paid a mere six or seven dollars a week.

The origins of the fire are unknown, but the fire sparked efforts to improve safety laws and workers' compensation laws.

The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), which grew in size and political power in the wake of the fire, organized a large rally and the Women’s Trade Union League campaigned to investigate working conditions for laborers and collected testimonies.

The governor of New York set up a Factory Investigating Commission, which conducted hearings across the state for five years. As a result, vital factory safety legislation was passed and new workers' compensation laws were pased.

The building that housed the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, now called the Brown Building, is a national historic landmark. The UNITE HERE union, which includes ILGWU, honors workers' contributions to American soceity every year on the fire's anniversary.

Charlotte E. Ray graduated from Howard Law School on February 27, 1872, becoming not only the first female African-American lawyer in the United States but also the first practicing female lawyer in Washington, D.C.

Ray was born in 1850 in New York City, where her father worked as a minister and was a prominent abolitionist. She attended the Institution for the Education of Colored Youth in Washington, D.C., one of the few educational institutions in the country that educated African-American girls.

In 1869, Ray began teaching at Howard University, which was established in 1867 to educate emancipated slaves and their decedents. During her first year of teaching, Ray was accepted into the Howard School of Law, where she applied under the name "C.E. Ray" because the university was reluctant to admit women to its law program.

Upon graduating in 1872, Ray opened a law practice, specializing in commercial law. However, Ray was unable to maintain her practice due to race and gender discrimination.  She returned to New York in 1879 where she worked as a teacher in Brooklyn. She was active in the women's suffrage movement until her death at age 60.

President Obama aims to create or save 3.5 million jobs over the next two years by spending some of the money in the recently-enacted stimulus plan on modernizing the nation's roads and bridges, investing in public transportation, and making federal office buildings more energy-efficient.

Civil rights advocates hope that the stimulus plan actually puts unemployed Americans, many of whom are Black and Hispanic, to work.  Currently, Hispanic and Black unemployment rates – at 9.7 and 12.6 percent respectively – are higher than the rates for other racial and ethnic groups.

To help close that gap, the National Urban League (NUL) has recommended that a portion of money be targeted (PDF) towards job training, job placement and job preparation for disadvantaged workers. NUL also urged the government to ensure minority- and women-owned businesses are in a position to take advantage of federal contract opportunities.

"It would be unconscionable to spend hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money and simply go back to where we were two years ago. We need to do better than that. We need to actually close that gap that can only be explained at the end of the day by the inclusion of race between white and black unemployment rates," said Ben Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP.