Тег: Work

“Sign here and forget that we are assholes”: how NDAs kill the truth about employers

You have probably heard the following more than once: “The market will settle everything.” If an employer is a tyrant, pays peanuts, and forces you to work weekends for a “thank you,” then the invisible hand of the market should simply slap them. People will leave, new ones won’t come, and the company will either fix itself or go bankrupt.

It sounds beautiful. However, for the market to work, it needs information. If you are buying a car, you want to know if it has been in an accident. If you are selling your labor, you want to know if the buyer is a cold-hearted psychopath who will cheat you out of your bonus. And this is where the stationary bandit (the state) steps in with its club, helping corporations break the feedback mechanism.

Very often, employees are forced to sign NDAs. Non-disparagement clauses are particularly noteworthy. This is legal newspeak that translates as: “We will pay you below market rate, scream profanities at meetings, and force you to overwork, but if you write about it on social media or leave a review on Glassdoor/Habr Career, we will sue you into poverty, and our puppet state court will help us do it.”

Why does this break the market? In economics, there is a term “the market for lemons” from economist George Akerlof. If a buyer cannot distinguish a good car from junk, sellers of junk drive out honest sellers. The same happens with jobs. A bad company pays lawyers to draft draconian contracts. The employee is told: “Sign this stating you have no claims and agree not to speak ill of us, otherwise you won’t get a severance package or a recommendation.”

A person cornered by a mortgage and children signs and stays silent. Meanwhile, a new applicant doesn’t know that the company is a living hell. The market signal is distorted. A toxic business continues to exist because the stationary bandit provides it with the muscle to enforce an unconscionable contract. Instead of an honest reputation, which should be the primary currency in a libertarian society, we get a sterile space where all companies are “white and fluffy” until you get inside.

The funniest part is that sometimes state courts still cannot withstand this absurdity. Yes, the state is a machine of violence, but even this machine’s fuses sometimes blow from the sheer audacity of corporations. Here are a few examples where the right to tell the truth defeated a corporation’s right to silence:

1) The McLaren Macomb and NLRB case (USA, 2023). The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in the States ruled that the very offer to an employee to sign a non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreement upon termination is illegal. The logic is simple: it violates employees’ rights to organize and discuss working conditions. Moreover, people cannot be forced to choose between a severance package and freedom of speech.

2) The Glassdoor case. Courts have repeatedly sided with review platforms when companies demanded the IP addresses of authors of negative reviews. They recognized that an employee’s opinion about a “toxic atmosphere” is simply an evaluative judgment protected by the First Amendment (in the USA), not defamation.

3) Russian practice (yes, it happens even here). Even in our latitudes, courts recognize clauses in employment contracts that prohibit employees from working for competitors or disclosing their salary as void. The right to free expression and the dissemination of information still works in some areas, no matter how much an HR director might wish otherwise.

What should a normal person do? Read what you sign (you can use AI models to look for “hidden pitfalls”). If you see a Non-disparagement clause without clear time limits and definitions, it’s a red flag. Remember the “Streisand Effect.” If a company sues a former employee over a review stating that it’s a bad place to work, that is the best advertisement that it is indeed a bad place to work. Furthermore, don’t forget that we live in the era of crypto-anarchism and Tor. Nothing currently prevents you from fulfilling your moral duty and telling everyone about a toxic employer anonymously, without consequences for yourself.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Why you shouldn’t work for the state

Many people see nothing wrong with cooperating with the state in every possible way, taking grants from it, working as a civil servant, or even building their entire career within the state sphere. Some may believe that there are certain prospects in this field, others think the state will help them, and still others believe they are working for the good of society. But let us look at what it actually means to tie oneself to the state.

1) You are easily framed

By working in the state sphere or even simply associating yourself with the state in any way, you automatically sign up for the risk that the crimes of other, more influential state officials will be pinned on you, or that you will be thrown behind bars simply because you displeased them in some way. Politics is characterized by cases where some bureaucrats shift their sins onto other bureaucrats, subordinates, or agents otherwise connected to them, and send those people to prison. In the private sphere, an attempt to set someone up can cost significant reputational and legal expenses. In the case of the state apparatus, a frame-up costs nothing, especially considering that the judicial system is under the patronage of the state itself.

The “Seventh Studio” case provides a good example of this phenomenon. In the end, state grants backfired on the founder of this theater troupe and some of his colleagues. This is a good example of why one should not get involved with the state, even if it promises help.

2) You will achieve nothing

If you decide to train for a profession in a field of activity that is either strictly regulated and subordinate, or entirely monopolized by the state, it is unlikely that anything good will come of it. In the private environment, different organizations compete with each other for employees. They have an incentive to raise wages and improve working conditions. But in the case of the state sphere, there are no alternative competing agents. That is why there are no economic incentives to raise wages and improve working conditions. Ordinary workers in the state sphere have nothing to gain!

Although, of course, a certain group of employees can lobby for their interests and get what they want, but in this situation, we move to point No. 3.

3) And if you do achieve something – at what cost and who will you become?

Suppose you were able to achieve something in the state sphere. Using your social skills, connections, bribery, and other corrupt methods, you either obtained certain privileges for yourself or occupied an important post in the state apparatus. In this case, you seem to be doing well. But this “well” is the same as the “well” of a thief who has robbed other people, or a rapist who torments their victims.

Unlike the market environment, where everyone within their private framework can promote their ideas without conflicting with other subjects, politics is always a conflict. And by winning this conflict, you only obtain benefits through the forced subordination of other subjects. Here, your interests are important, and the interests of others can be brutally ignored.

If you like this state of affairs, it is obvious what conclusions can be drawn about you. You are a robber, a rapist, and a maniac! And do not try to justify yourself by saying that you work for the good of society as a whole. You have certain beliefs and programs that require the implementation of specific ideas regarding the entire society at once, disregarding the desires of those who disagree and would want something else. Again, in a market environment, everyone can try to implement their ideas without a violent struggle against those whose ideas are completely opposite; no one needs to subordinate other people to their ideas for them to work (politicized ideas, however, cannot work without this).

Furthermore, let us not forget point No. 1. No matter what privileges you have now, it is unknown where they will lead in the future. Perhaps the highest state officials will dislike you for some reason, and you will have to prepare for the worst. Or perhaps power will change, and you will also be sent far away as a supporter of the wrong ideas.

Getting involved with the state is harmful to oneself. You may become a victim of a frame-up, you are unlikely to find anything good in the state sphere if you are an ordinary worker, and if you do achieve something, it will only be through robbery and violence against other people. Obviously, it is not worth it!

Vitaliy Tizun