One of the things Tribune Co. required of its last batch of laid-off employees was that they sign an agreement not to say anything disparaging about the company.
The employees didn’t have to sign if they didn’t want their severence packages.
These kinds of things are standard in many businesses, I know. But newspapers are not just any businesses. They capitalize, literally, on the willingness and ability of people to speak freely to the press. To the extent that they thrive (not so much these days, admittedly), they thrive because we live in society that values free speech and a free flow of information and opinions. (Not anonymous irresponsible free speech, like on Topix, but honest speech for which people can be held accountable.)
For a newspaper company to demand such control over its departing employees is hypocritical. Companies have a right to protect their proprietary information and intellectual property, but a newspaper company should not be party to the kind of control over speech that these agreements imply. Including this proviso in the severence agreements speaks more loudly about the company’s lack of faith in its employees than anything any of them could ever say to disparage it.
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Was this provision in the agreement I signed? I don’t remember it, not that it would have made a difference. Who would turn down a bunch of money for the right to criticize? I know I signed away my right to sue, also. The grounds for a lawsuit are more evident in the latest round of layoffs, as older people were laid off even though they were clearly more valuable to the paper than the younger people who were kept. But who wants to sue a bankrupt company and wait years and years for a potential payoff when you can take a payoff right now, even if it’s a small payoff?
As for it being shameful that a newspaper company of all companies would impose a gag rule, since when have newspaper companies behaved differently from other companies when facing adversity? They all act the same way, paying fired workers not to talk.
I don’t think this provision was in the July layoff packet. The promise not to sue was.
I had forgotten about that nasty little proviso. In my class (this is sort of like a road cut where the various strata represent the driving out of employees at various times) they had that, too. I objected strenuously to Human Resources and the way we left it was me being told that once I had the money it was pretty unlikely that Tribune was going to come after me and — most important — that so long as I could maintain that what I said is what I believed to be true then they couldn’t come after me for voicing the truth. That covers a huge swath of sins, of course. Legally it is ground to stand on in the extremely unlikely event that they should ever decide to be seen as ribbing the pockets of dead people. The truth is a pretty handy thing.
Do we smell blood? Interesting to know that they’re not indifferent to the puny pokes and jabs of the people they so imperiously, unjustly and indiscriminately deprived of a living during the job drought of a new depression. We can hurt them a little, it seems. And knowing that we can is, I’m sure, not going to incite any of us to try to hurt them still more. I would urge them – and those readers who have miraculously not yet canceled their subscriptions – to keep reading the comments on this blog.