In a reversal of the typical employer-forces-employee-into-arbitration scenario, Oracle America Inc. has lost out on a bid to overturn an employee’s motion to compel arbitration in a dispute over how the enterprise software giant pays commissions.

Thursday’s unpublished decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upholds a lower court ruling granting former sales employee Marcella Johnson’s motion to compel arbitration against the company. Johnson’s case, in turn, illustrates the lengths that employees and their lawyers at times must go to in order to get their claims considered on a classwide basis.