April 18, 2026

For thirty years we told our kids to stay out of the trades. Get a college degree. Work in an office. The dirty jobs — welding, machining, electrical work, process operations — those were for people who didn’t have options. That narrative is about to reverse violently, and the people who understand it early will be positioned very differently from those who figure it out late.

Craig Tindale made the point without sentiment: we are going to need an enormous number of blue collar workers, and we don’t have them. The Colorado School of Mines needs to double in size. Every industrial training program in the country is undersized for what’s coming. The skills to safely operate a zinc smelter, manage a sulfuric acid processing line, commission a copper refinery — these have been allowed to atrophy for a generation because we decided we didn’t need them. We need them now.

You cannot re-industrialize with white collar workers alone. The physical processes that underpin a functioning industrial economy require people who can operate and maintain physical equipment, troubleshoot process failures in real time, and apply the kind of embodied knowledge that doesn’t exist in a spreadsheet or an AI model. When a valve fails at 2 AM in a processing facility, you need someone who knows what that valve does, why it failed, and how to fix it without shutting down the entire line.

The wage implication is already playing out. Electricians, pipefitters, and industrial mechanics are commanding salaries that would have seemed implausible a decade ago. That trend has years to run. The most valuable workers in the re-industrializing economy will be the ones who can actually make things. That’s not a prediction. It’s already happening.

When Trump moved aggressively on Venezuela and positioned military assets near the Strait of Hormuz, most commentary focused on the obvious: oil, sanctions, regional power projection. That’s the surface reading. The deeper reading is about China’s energy vulnerability and the logic of conjoined-twin warfare.

China controls the midstream of Western critical mineral supply chains. That’s their leverage. But China has its own chokepoint: energy. The Chinese economy is massively dependent on oil imports, and the majority transit the Strait of Hormuz. China cannot secure its own energy supply lines militarily in the Persian Gulf.

Venezuela was a Chinese client state with significant oil reserves. Iranian oil flows to China in volume. If the U.S. controls both — through sanctions enforcement or military positioning — it holds a counter-lever against Chinese rare earth coercion. You restrict our gallium, we restrict your tankers. The logic is brutal and simple.

Craig Tindale frames this as a classic unrestricted warfare equilibrium: each side applies pressure at the other’s soft points to prevent the balance from tipping too far. It’s not about winning outright. It’s about maintaining enough mutual vulnerability that neither side pulls the trigger on full economic warfare. Conjoined twins trying to choke each other — neither can kill the other without dying themselves.

The investment implication: energy geopolitics and critical mineral geopolitics are no longer separate analysis tracks. They are the same track. The companies, commodities, and regions sitting at the intersection of Middle East energy, African critical minerals, and strategic shipping routes are not just commodity plays. They are positions on the board of the most consequential geopolitical game of the next twenty years.

On April 1, 2026, the Ninth Circuit handed California employers a meaningful win in O’Dell v. Aya Healthcare Services, Inc., No. 25-1528. The court reversed a Southern District of California ruling that had used a procedural doctrine—non-mutual offensive collateral estoppel—to invalidate arbitration agreements for more than 250 opt-in plaintiffs based on two prior arbitrator decisions finding the employer’s agreements unconscionable.

The decision matters because it closes off a tactic that could have allowed a small number of adverse arbitration outcomes to wipe out an employer’s entire arbitration program in a collective or class action. For California employers who have invested in arbitration agreements as a risk-management tool, the ruling reaffirms a foundational principle: each arbitration agreement stands or falls on its own terms.

Here are five practical takeaways for California employers.

1. Arbitration agreements must be evaluated individually, not in bulk.

The district court in O’Dell allowed two arbitrator rulings—each involving a different employee and a different arbitrator—to preclude Aya from enforcing hundreds of other arbitration agreements signed by opt-in plaintiffs. The Ninth Circuit rejected that approach, holding that the Federal Arbitration Act requires courts to enforce arbitration agreements according to their terms and that applying non-mutual offensive collateral estoppel in this context conflicts with the FAA’s core principle of consent.

For California employers facing collective or class actions—particularly under the California Labor Code —this means that a single adverse arbitration ruling against one employee does not automatically bind the employer as to every other employee. Each agreement is its own contract, and each employee consented to arbitration on an individualized basis.

2. Delegation clauses remain powerful.

The Aya arbitration agreements contained delegation clauses that sent questions of the agreement’s validity to the arbitrator rather than the court. That structure was central to what happened next: when the initial four plaintiffs challenged the agreements, arbitrators—not judges—decided the unconscionability questions.

California employers should consider having clear, express delegation clauses in their arbitration agreements. A well-drafted delegation clause keeps gateway issues (validity, enforceability, scope) in the arbitral forum and reduces the number of issues courts can use to deny a motion to compel. O’Dell is a reminder that the architecture of the agreement—not just the substance—matters.

3. Split arbitrator results do not doom the rest of the program.

In Aya’s case, the arbitrators divided two-to-two on whether the agreements were unconscionable. The district court gave preclusive effect only to the two decisions finding the agreements invalid—turning a split into a sweeping defeat. The Ninth Circuit correctly observed that this approach transformed individualized arbitrations into something like an unauthorized bellwether class action that the parties never agreed to.

The lesson for employers: inconsistent arbitrator outcomes are a fact of life in large workforces. O’Dell confirms that adverse decisions in a handful of arbitrations are not a basis for invalidating agreements with other employees. Employers can continue to enforce their agreements on an individual basis, even when some arbitrators reach unfavorable results.

4. The ruling does not cure substantively flawed arbitration agreements.

O’Dell is a procedural win. It does not insulate employers from the substantive unconscionability challenges that remain the bread-and-butter of plaintiffs’ attacks on arbitration in California. The Armendariz factors can still apply, and California courts continue to scrutinize fee-splitting provisions, venue clauses, limitations on remedies, discovery restrictions, and presentation issues—as recent cases like Fuentes v. Empire Nissan (arbitration agreement in nearly unreadable font) illustrate.

Two of the four arbitrators in O’Dell found Aya’s agreements unconscionable because of their fee and venue provisions. That is a reminder that even a structurally sound arbitration program can be undone by one-sided terms. Employers should not read O’Dell as a reason to delay a substantive review of their agreements.

5. California employers should use this as a reminder to audit their arbitration programs.

Now is a good time for California employers to conduct a focused audit of their arbitration agreements. Key items to review include:

• Consider implementing a delegation clause assigning gateway issues to the arbitrator.
• Fee allocation consistent with Armendariz—the employer bears the costs unique to arbitration.
• A reasonable, neutral venue that does not impose unfair burdens on the employee.
• Mutual remedies and mutual coverage (both sides bound to arbitrate).
• A severability or savings clause that allows the agreement to survive if a specific provision is found unenforceable.
• Presentation that passes a readability check—legible font, clear headings, separate signature, and no buried consent.
• A carve-out framework that properly addresses PAGA and sexual harassment claims consistent with current California and federal law.

The Ninth Circuit has reaffirmed that arbitration programs built on individualized consent will be enforced on an individualized basis. Employers who pair that protection with a substantively defensible agreement are in the strongest possible position heading into the remainder of 2026.

The post Five Takeaways for California Employers from the Ninth Circuit’s Arbitration Ruling in O’Dell v. Aya Healthcare Services appeared first on California Employment Law Report.