I wouldn't sign that any more than I'd sign a contract that gave the company everything that I produce in my own time. Both are attempts by the corporation to dissolve my agency as a human being.
The only right answer is no.
The only right answer is no.
Consideration is something of value given by a promissor to a promisee in exchange for something of value given by a promisee to a promissor. Typically, the thing of value is a payment, although it may be an act, or forbearance to act.
Paying you not to speak is no more an attempt to dissolve your human agency than paying you to speak. Assuming you have nothing disparaging to say, not agreeing is foolish.
That sounds an awful lot like "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear", a statement which I know is very much false.
What you think is disparaging may be very different from what your employer thinks is disparaging. By signing away your rights using ill-defined and imprecise language, you are only opening yourself up to potential legal troubles later.
I could flip your final statement on its head: assuming you don't desperately need the severance payment, agreeing is foolish.
Then your pattern matcher is giving you a false hit.
Your statement is about a government imposing unreasonable searches and seizure of you and your personal effects for the illusion of societal security.
The subject under discussion is about exchanging value for value in a voluntary transaction with you and a non-monopolistic employer.
[edit: added "voluntary"]
What's wrong?
What's disparaging?
If you've done nothing wrong, you have no reason to fear being searched for something wrong.
If you've nothing disparaging to say, you have no reason not to agree to a non-disparagement clause.
I don't see how unreasonable search and seizure or whether the employer is monopolistic or not even enter into this.
Maybe it comes out that your ex-employer was engaged in fraud. When you hear the news on social media you say "wow, Joe in accounting always did strike me as funny." You didn't mean it as disparaging. But the company does.
The "if you have nothing disparaging to say, don't worry about it" is a question of making a choice. If you choose to be able to disparage your employer in the future, don't take the severance. It would be your choice. If you choose to be careful of what you say, then take the money.
Monopoly affects whether or not you have choices in a society. The government is a monopoly, a monopoly that has the right to physically force you into compliance. Because of that simple fact, everything the government does or is allowed to do requires much greater scrutiny.
Your former employer (and anyone else you have done significant business with) can always find some flimsy basis for a lawsuit that will cost you several dozens of sleepless nights and $10k-$20k in lawyers fees, before it is thrown out by the judge.
What is stopping the other guy is they are not pissed off enough to throw $50k-$100k in the toilet for the lawyers fees and distraction to punish you unjustly.
Not signing does not actually protect you from baseless suits, if you run your mouth.
I think this actually cuts both ways, since companies usually have deep pockets and are responsible to investors. This is the only reason companies offer severance in the first place -- it's cheaper than dealing with the lawsuits.
Listen to this: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/06/kling_on_the_th.htm...
Crass example, let's say you worked at a bank, parted on good terms, signed such an agreement. A few months later it turned out the bank had been laundering billions of dollars of drug money. This has no affect on the agreement you signed. Still got nothing disparaging to say?
So exactly what "consideration" are you talking about?
On the contrary, I assert that severance pay is normal with or without the gag-clause. So the employer has put the "value" of signing agreement at zero.
The article stated the author would have to give up his lifetime right to make "any negative or disparaging statements (orally or in writing) about the Company or its stockholders, directors, officers, employees, products, services or business practices". That's a huge thing. Let's imagine the company you worked for starts selling organs of little orphans for transplant. You are not allowed to criticize them for that. Let's say they start a fracking operation that contaminates the water of millions of people. Or irresponsibly build a nuclear reactor that melts down a week later. Imagine one of the stockholders is Carl Icahn. You'll never be able to criticize him again. Or Donald Trump. Can you imagine never being able to make fun of his hair? Imagine then your cable company buys one share of the company you worked for. Now you can't criticize them if your TV goes out because they are a shareholder. Imagine your ex-wife learns about your contract and buys one share.
You get the idea.
That would be tantamount to signing a release to play in a softball league and then one of the other players attacks you with a bat. So, you can't get your hospital bills covered, now?
If you sign the agreement and then renege, it's not like they can sue you for a million dollars in damages if your "disparaging" remarks are true.
They can sue you for slander/libel with or without you having entered into the severance agreement. If we're talking about getting sued for entering and then breaking the agreement, we're probably not talking about "millions of dollars" but rather whatever the contract specifies the penalty for breaking the contract would be (and this is still up to a court to decide what's actually enforceable).
What it covers is what you say about the company in the context (which can be broadly defined) of your being an ex-employee. If you say, "I worked at Time Warner Cable and it was run by idiots", that violates nondisparagement, because you're saying it as an insider. If you criticize the product not under your real name, or in private while not representing yourself as an ex-employee, you're probably fine.
Now, had it been a salaried position, I would have been far more concerned.
I've found three good pushback techniques:
1. "My [insert family member] is a lawyer and I haven't seen this clause before, so I'm going to get her to read over the agreement." Next day I just say that they won't let me sign it. Why make up a family member as a lawyer? Because to push back or hire a lawyer is viewed as an aggressive move, while affably showing deference to your family member isn't.
Later in life when the job / contract offers started getting bigger:
2. "I don't sign things I don't intend to follow and I'm going to be building things in this industry on my own time for my own profit." Strait up confidence along with the fuck-you attitude to back it up by walking away. I'm never going to work for someone that is that dense and short sighted anyway.
Every single company has allowed me to just strike out the clause and have us both initial it.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/04/09/ea-voted-w...
A personal attack? Can we save the ad hominems for somewhere else? I fail to see how being an informed consumer is a problem. I care how/where my dollars are spent.
If you read the post you linked to, it quite reasonably says that EA is not the worst employer to work for. It's just that the Internet crowd thinks that it is. And what GP said was that this crowd comprises of people like yourself, which again is reasonable observation, not an attack.
My point is that, given that so many people love to hate EA (for better or worse, and regardless of whether their reasons make sense or not), it's really no surprise that EA is continually "awarded" such "honors".
Maybe you, knappe, have other (better) reasons to hate EA than those that relate to some ten-year-old drama that (probably) didn't personally affect you. Maybe you don't. But there is an Internet full of people who will probably never stop hating EA, no matter what.
This isn't to say that enormous, profit-hungry companies will never tend to act like tsunamis, but I don't know that your comparison is generally valid.
It is perfectly possible to see a company change every person in it and still have exactly the same behaviors, especially the pathological ones. I understand that from the employee's perspective, managers and execs seem to have near-infinite power. But from the perspective of any one of those people, they are vastly outnumbered; trying to change organizational culture is at best incredibly difficult.
Waves tend to hold their shapes. Culture is a wave through individual humans. Or, perhaps more accurately, a standing wave through which humans pass.
"So you intend to violate the Working Time Directive? Because if you don't, I will have lots of spare time outside of my contracted hours".
Of course if they'd given me that line, I'd told them that if so they'd need to at least triple whatever offer I might have previously considered.
For reference, CA Code 2870: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab&gr...
BTW, this is an unusual hypothetical, and not really what you're talking about here. What you're mentioning is the sort of "you're a coder for us, we will give you projects, you will need to complete them, we expect you to work on them 40+ hours a week, and oh, also, we own all other tech related projects that you might happen to do while you are employed by us".
I fully recognize that the #2 is far more common than #1.