Tech's NDA Wall is Crumbling. Salesforce is Next. (protocol.com) 9
Salesforce just became the latest tech giant to commit to limiting the scope of its non-disclosure agreements, freeing workers up to talk about instances of harassment or discrimination they experience on the job. From a report: Salesforce and all California employers are already required to make these changes for workers in the state under California's Silenced No More Act. But the new policy extends those protections to all Salesforce employees across the country. "Our employees are key stakeholders, and it's critical that we offer them the support to ensure they're happy, healthy and protected," the company wrote in a blog post Friday. Salesforce plans to implement the changes by the end of 2022.
A good deal of the credit for this shift goes to the so-called Transparency in Employment Agreements Coalition, a group of advocates and investors that has been using shareholder proposals to encourage tech giants, including Salesforce, Meta, Alphabet and Apple, to extend the policies enshrined in the Silenced No More Act to all of their employees. One of the leaders of that coalition, former Pinterest employee Ifeoma Ozoma, was instrumental in pushing that law forward in California. Another version of the law also recently passed in Washington state.
A good deal of the credit for this shift goes to the so-called Transparency in Employment Agreements Coalition, a group of advocates and investors that has been using shareholder proposals to encourage tech giants, including Salesforce, Meta, Alphabet and Apple, to extend the policies enshrined in the Silenced No More Act to all of their employees. One of the leaders of that coalition, former Pinterest employee Ifeoma Ozoma, was instrumental in pushing that law forward in California. Another version of the law also recently passed in Washington state.
Re: (Score:3)
Depending on where you live you can have it declared null and void.
Already illegal (Score:5, Informative)
It's already illegal to fire employees for discussing wrongful treatment of any kind in the workplace in the state of California.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong (Score:3)
IANAL: I was under the impression that contracts (like NDAs) are null and void, at least in part, if they conflict with local/state/federal law. Since harassment and discrimination are generally illegal at the federal level, wouldn't an NDA barring people from talking about these illegal actions be unenforceable?
Re:Someone correct me if I'm wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
IANAL either but i believe what a lot of people have run into is just the legal burden of having it declared or confirmed null and void. Even if the company is in the wrong if they still decide to take action against you now you have to lawyer up and go through the rigamarole to defend yourself, which everyone may not have the time and money to do.
Re: (Score:2)
Lots of contracts have unenforceable sections. It works because they don't rely on enforcing it. They rely on you reading it and believing it.
but the fiduciary responsibility to... (Score:2)
Now there is an explicit directive that over rides that.
Should need it, but in the here and now of "you're not the boss of me! I'm just 'disruptive' and you're against me!"
Like all things It is a trend until it isn't (Score:4, Insightful)
Right now it is an Employee market. So companies are bending over backwards in any way that they can to keep employees, and attract new ones. For my job, we have been interviewing candidates that we normally hired with a decade of experience, who are just out of college with no experience, we are giving them good offers and they are rejecting it because they are getting better offers elsewhere.
So my employer is trying different things to attract more people to apply, better benefits, and also making sure these changes are given to existing employees to make sure they stay.
Truth be told how Employee friendly the market it right now scares me. There are a lot of companies who may be over reaching to attract talent, and when the next downturn happens, a lot of people are going to get canned, because the companies will not be able to afford to employee the people. Then when there are a lot of people looking for a job that isn't available, the power will be back to the employer who will then impose less benefits and more strict rules.
During the late 1990's during the .COM Boom! with Economy 2.0 Companies were hiring anyone with some sort of tech skills and offering them a sweet deal. After the Tech bubble popped, a lot of Tech Workers got canned, companies outsourced the work to the cheapest bidder. It took about a decade to recover from that, where companies realized the cheapest outsource isn't necessarily the best value, so they started bringing in skilled higher paid labor.
The pain from the Tech Bubble Pop, is still fresh in my head, so that is why I actually work for a place with a strong record of keeping employees even in hard times, and not layoff or cut pay. Sure during bad times, they may be a hiring freeze, or not get our annual merit increase, but it is better then trying to find work. A lot of the new guys in Tech don't have that experience, so they are jumping to the best money deal they can get, where it might in a few years become a big problem.
Explains a lot... (Score:2)
The fact that employees were contractually forbidden from talking about discrimination and harassment goes a long way toward explaining why Salesforce came out against bills that prohibited religious discrimination (i.e. RFRA) and pulled out of states that clamped down on abortion.
They wouldn't have put those things into their NDAs unless they knew they had a problem with them. I can only wonder how many women were advised to "get an abortion and forget about it..." or how many Christians were told to k