I share that concern. However, Wiley struck a balance between corporate freedom and the protection of workers, recognizing that arbitration was an important means of maintaining labor peace and that “employees who are in fact retained in ‘[t]he transition from one corporate organization to another’ ” need to be afforded protection “from sudden changes in the terms and conditions of their employment.” Howard Johnson, 417 U.S. at 264, 94 S.Ct. 2236 (quoting and describing Wiley). The implication of the majority opinion is that Wiley is virtually a dead letter confined to its specific facts, essentially overruled. But it is not within our power to emasculate Wiley — only the Supreme Court can do that. See State Oil Co. v. Khan, 522 U.S. 3, 20, 118 S.Ct. 275, 139 L.Ed.2d 199 (1997) (<HOLDING>) (internal quotation marks omitted). II.
holding that it is not our prerogative to overrule or ignore clearly written decisions of our supreme court holding that directly applicable supreme court decisions require this court to overrule its prior holdings holding that court of appeals erred in considering itself bound by fifth circuit precedents holding that the court of appeals was correct to apply a supreme court precedent despite the precedents infirmities and its increasingly wobbly motheaten foundations because it is this courts prerogative alone to overrule one of its precedents holding that the court of appeals erred in declining to apply supreme court precedent even though the reasoning of that precedent had been eroded by subsequent decisions