Study Hall Digest 6/29/2020

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

How Nondisclosure Agreements Kept Racism, Sexism, and Workplace Abuses Under Wraps at Complex

On June 19, former Complex staffer Tiffany Wines, who worked across both the social and editorial departments, tweeted an open letter detailing the toxic and abusive work environment she had endured at the media company. Wines, a Black woman, said she had been repeatedly bullied and undermined by her male bosses. She reported inappropriate behavior from her boss in the social media department, Arman Walia, but he was never disciplined (she would later learn that at least five other women had reported Walia to HR). The boys’ club culture at the magazine even led to a traumatic episode in which she unknowingly ate drug-laced cookies that had been left in the office kitchen, an episode which she also reported but was never adequately addressed. “My silence ends today,” she wrote.

Wines signed a separation agreement with Complex containing a non-disparagement clause, meaning she was prohibited from speaking negatively about the company and risked legal action if she broke that agreement. She told Study Hall the agreement had been hanging over her head since she left the company in February. “Ever since signing it, I have basically been living in fear, and I was made to feel as if I had done something so wrong by choosing to leave,” Wines said. “It was a major source of anxiety, because I knew people from the company were monitoring my social media, and the language of the NDA was such that if anything could be perceived to be about [complaints against the company], they could come after me.”

She had good reason to fear that possibility. During her fraught exit process, she tweeted about new media companies belittling their employees then silencing them with NDAs when they leave, never naming Complex. Still, senior employee Jay Salim emailed her lawyer demanding that Wines delete the tweet and “refrain from talking about the company,” or her severance offer would be rescinded.

This month, when Wines saw the company paying lip service to the Black Lives Matter movement, she said that she couldn’t stand the hypocrisy from a company that had repeatedly devalued and dismissed the work of Black women. “I figured the best way to not live in fear anymore was to just own it and come forward and see what happens,” she told Study Hall.

Adam Braverman, a lawyer who specializes in employment law, said NDAs and non-disparagement agreements, however standard, serve to blockade employees who have been subjected to workplace mistreatment. “I think companies are using this as a way to silence people,” he said. “That’s absolutely what they’re doing.” (NDAs and non-disparagement clauses are different, but often overlap: hypothetically, a nondisclosure agreement protects a company’s confidential information, like IP or business practices; non-disparagement clauses, which can also appear in NDAs, specifically prohibit employees from disparaging the company. In practice, when they are used in cases of sexual misconduct or other forms of mistreatment, both prevent victims from speaking about their experiences.)

Days after Wines published her statement, her former colleague Kiana Fitzgerald voiced her support and gave her own account of mistreatment at the company. She had also signed an agreement with NDA language in order to receive her severance package, and she told Study Hall that turning down the money was a luxury she couldn’t afford. “I had to agree to not disparage them moving forward,” she said. “It’s New York City. I don’t have a safety net; I don’t have a rich family. I needed a way to just make it.” Signing the agreement gave her six months of severance and three months on COBRA health insurance. “That’s what I signed my voice away for,” she said.

Fitzgerald pointed out that such agreements will, by their nature, disproportionately silence those who can’t afford to turn down severance packages — especially Black women, she said. She had spoken to her lawyer before making the decision to publicly support Wines and was told that Complex could attempt to take back the severance money. She decided to take her chance and hope that the current cultural moment, in which brands are motivated to make a show of supporting racial justice and touting safe workplaces for Black employees, might deter the magazine from retaliating. “In this climate where people are making their voices heard, where Black women are protected, I thought, ‘This is my best chance to speak my truth,’” said Fitzgerald.

But both know that the company could potentially come after them in the future, if public scrutiny wanes. “It would be a bad look for now to come after vulnerable Black women who are just trying to speak out about horrible experiences,” said Fitzgerald. So far, Wines and Fitzgerald haven’t heard from Complex’s lawyers, although the company did put out a tepid statement saying they are addressing the recent claims. Wines said that isn’t enough — she wants a release in writing to ensure they won’t try to punish her down the line.

In addition to releases from NDAs, there has been some progress in eliminating NDAs from certain kinds of contracts, Braverman noted. After the #MeToo movement, several states passed legislation to prohibit nondisclosure agreements in sexual misconduct cases, but in most states, there are still loopholes. He offered New York as an example: in the state, an employee can refuse to sign an agreement, but an employer can then refuse to settle altogether and take the case to trial, which most workers would want to avoid due to the cost.

Some have argued that doing away with NDAs altogether would make settlements impossible, but Braverman argued that precedent says otherwise. In the case of wage and overtime disputes, a 2015 federal statute mandates that settlement agreements must be filed publicly and confidentiality agreements are prohibited. Settlements have continued apace regardless, he said. The circumstances are different, of course, but show that perhaps not using NDAs would be just fine. Most importantly, doing away with such agreements would allow employees to speak freely about workplace harassment and abuse without fear.

Longread of the Week: Sometimes an article makes a connection that seems completely obvious in retrospect, if only anyone had thought to put it together before. Such is Study Haller Alicia Kennedy’s recent newsletter calling for more translation in food media. Of course! Translation is a huge force for good in literature, so why isn’t there more translation in American English-language food journalism, which is facing down the problem of how to cover culinary culture from all over the world? “Bon Appétit’s recipes often noted that a non-European recipe wasn’t intimidating by adding the modifier ‘weeknight’ but never did such a thing with a Bolognese,” Kennedy writes. “What if the Mapo Tofu recipe could be written in Mandarin and translated? Hell, what if the Bolognese came from someone writing in Italian? Edith Wharton wrote, per this Vulture story on corporate jargon, ‘Don’t you know how, in talking a foreign language, even fluently, one says half the time, not what one wants to, but what one can?’ What would the world be like if we were all conveying to each other what we mean instead of just what we can?” — Kyle Chayka

Everything Else

— BuzzFeed News has fired senior reporter Ryan Broderick over repeated instances of plagiarism. The company published an apology, noting that a handful of stories by Broderick were not up to editorial standards and had been revised.

— Both Curbed San Francisco and Curbed LA announced the sites are shuttering. As of today, their content will appear on the flagship site Curbed.com ahead of a fall move to New York Magazine, where they will appear as newly integrated verticals as a result of last year’s Vox-NYMag merger.

— White people in media and entertainment simply can’t stop going on Ziwe Fumudoh’s hilarious, often painfully awkward “Baited” Instagram livestreams!!! Most recently, canceled shallot queen Alison Roman appeared on the show, where she claimed there had been no Black people working at Bon Appétit during her time there. New Yorker writer Doreen St. Félix then commented that she had WORKED WITH Roman while interning at the publication. Yikes!?!!

— Speaking of the garbage fire that is Bon Appétit — Condé Nast has apparently suspended Bon Appétit video editor Matt Hunziker for speaking out about racism within the company. Not a great look!

— How was your week? I learned this Barstool Sports podcaster has a salary of $500,000 so my life is ruined.

– More Condé drama: the New Yorker union undertook a half-day work stoppage as the company has refused to agree to a just cause addition to their contracts without loopholes.