Employers can't force you to keep quiet to get severance, labor board decides, reversing Trump-era rulings

Companies that make former workers promise not to disparage their former employers in exchange for a severance payment are breaking the law, the National Labor Relations Board ruled Tuesday, restoring what it said was an "important principle and longstanding precedent" that employees cannot be coerced into waiving their rights.

The decision concerned a Michigan hospital that, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, terminated 11 union employees and asked them — in exchange for a payout — to sign severance agreements barring them from making public comments "which could disparage or harm" the company.

In 2020, the NLRB, at the time operating with a Republican majority, twice ruled that such limits on speech were legal, arguing in one of its decisions that severance agreements with nondisparagement clauses are "entirely voluntary."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/employers-cant-force-keep-quiet-010927927.html