Arbitration issues have been in the news this week. On Feb. 27 the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant. 

The company argued that a federal appeals court improperly blocked enforcement of a commercial arbitration agreement between American Express Co. and retailers that accept the company's credit cards based on a class action waiver contained in the arbitration pact. Representing American Express, Michael Kellogg said the Supreme Court decision in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion makes clear that under the Federal Arbitration Act, courts must enforce the terms of arbitration agreements as written and the lack of a classwide arbitration provision does not render such agreements unenforceable as a matter of federal law.

While the case arises in an antitrust context, the Supreme Court's ruling likely will affect arbitration under federal employment statutes as well, as employers increasingly require arbitration of employment disputes under agreements that explicitly or implicitly bar class claims and collective actions.

The case put me in an arbitration frame of mind. It reminded me that a subscriber recently asked me for statistics on labor arbitration cases, specifically how long it takes for a dispute to go from grievance to arbitration.

Honestly, I didn't know. I personally have not given arbitrators much thought, stats-wise. Fortunately, a BNA reporter, who had attended the National Academy of Arbitrators' annual meeting in 2012, handed me copies of two reports that he had been given there, and therein lay the answers. 

According to the American Arbitration Association, it took a median of 209 days for a grievance to go from filing to settlement, and 253 days to go from filing to award. This was for AAA cases filed in 2011 and closed by 2012, which AAA said totaled 6,222 cases.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service handed out its own arbitration statistics, covering fiscal year 2011, that were broken down into steps-from filing to panel to appointment to hearing to award. The upshot, if I'm adding up the steps correctly, is that the total mean time--mean, not median--from filing to award was 484.81 days. This was for 2,296 cases that reached the award step in fiscal year 2013.