Last month, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that employers can no longer include non-disparagement clauses in severance agreements with employees. Non-disparagement agreements barred laid off or terminated employees from sharing negative thoughts or experiences about their former employers, in exchange for a few months’ salary. If federal courts uphold the NLRB’s decision, it would effectively invalidate these clauses from severance agreements.
While this may seem like a dry contractual legal change, it actually materially impacts the way we can communicate about our bosses, our financial compensation, and our actual work duties in the public eye. Transparency into people’s experiences and opinions of work, which previously may have been deemed too counterproductive to capitalism to expose, could now, as a result of this rule change, become more normalized outside of informal whisper networks or happy hour gossip sessions.
