We have a system of laws that decide which private contracts are enforceable and which are not. So we can try to change the law but as it stands we have decided that this one is enforceable.
FWIW I agree about not enforcing non disparagement clauses but legally that not the world we live in.
"we" is a strong word here. More like some people 50-80 years ago decided to at worst rule against the worker's best interest, and at best chose to ignore it and pretend things would work out with a "gentlemans' agreement".
Contracts are negotiable at most companies once you get to a certain level. I negotiated my last contract, and I’m an IC, not an exec. In fact I made the non-disparaging clause mutual, among other things.
Different entities having different amounts of leverage in a negotiation is neither unusual nor inherently immoral.
If someone gives you the option to accept $ to sign a contract agreeing not talk about something that is legal but morally bad, and you say yes, then talk about the thing, you will correctly be losing the lawsuit, no matter how bad the thing is.
>Different entities having different amounts of leverage in a negotiation is neither unusual nor inherently immoral.
Having a leverage to force an NDA is not immoral, but breaking the NDA (no matter how unfair the situation that led to it being signed was) is immoral.
This goes to the issue of whether severance is compensation for past work or consideration for future work, which is a legal gray area.
The pro-compensation crowd assumes that because severance is taxed as compensation, that it is payment for past work, and therefore any non-disparagement clauses are illegal.
This is something I have seen just stated as if it was an iron-clad fact, rather than something that the courts don't actually uphold at present.
The pro-consideration crowd says that while severance is considered compensation after it is granted, the procedure of needing to sign a contract saying "you cannot disparage us if you want this payment" together with the fact that severance is optional and not mandated by law, means that it falls into the consideration category, and your end of the bargain is to not disparage the company if you want the severance, otherwise don't sign the contract and you wont get the severance.
That said, what is a more interesting take is whether states should make non-disparagement clauses illegal in the same way that many states have made NDA clauses illegal. That would basically force companies to not demand this in exchange for severance. This has the upside of being legally unambiguous but the downside of needing to actually fight for states to pass these laws, as opposed to just assuming that non-disparagement clauses are illegal under existing laws, which isn't an argument that will find much sympathy in the courts.
>The pro-compensation crowd assumes that because severance is taxed as compensation, that it is payment for past work, and therefore any non-disparagement clauses are illegal.
Here are more considerations:
- No person who did no work for the company gets to sign a "non-disparagement" clause, or get a severance.
- The severance amount is very commonly proportional to the length of service.
Insofar as the words "compensation" and work have meaning, severance is very clearly compensation for past work.
Fulfilling a non-disparagement clause is what no sane person would call work, no matter how many Orwellian mental hoops are jumped through to label it as such.
>This is something I have seen just stated as if it was an iron-clad fact, rather than something that the courts don't actually uphold at present.
Insofar as we're discussing the morality of these clauses, it's iron-clad enough.
>That said, what is a more interesting take is whether states should make non-disparagement clauses illegal in the same way that many states have made NDA clauses illegal.
The "pro-compensation" crowd argues that this indeed should happen, not that the clauses are currently universally recognized as illegal (the article we're discussing very clearly shows that it's not the case).
That's fine, but you understand that severance is completely optional. But paying someone for doing work is not optional, there are minimum wage laws. It may be a corporate policy to offer severance, but those policies are often changed and are not part of the employment contract people sign (or very rarely is this the case).
If severance was part of your compensation, it would be part of the contract you sign. Instead, it's something in addition to your contract.
So it's very hard to argue that severance is compensation for past work when the company can choose not to give any severance, or not give to someone who doesn't sign a contract.
Also, you only get severance after you sign the contract about non-disparagement, not before, so it's very much a consideration situation.
Basically the reality is that business offer severance as a type of bribe for people not to sue them or disparage them.
This is why the courts have rejected your line of reasoning.
> Making a bonus contingent on engaging in your fetishes is definitely not OK
And yet here you are shaming me for my kink of making compensation contingent on provided service...
Severance is compensation given up front in exchange for the labor/service of signing and following through with the severance agreement.
It is not compensation for work that was performed. It is compensation for work that will be performed.
It is not something you are entitled to by virtue of having worked somewhere. The company is free to fire you with no severance whatsoever if they want (in the US).
>And yet here you are shaming me for my kink of making compensation contingent on provided service...
The service to get a severance has been provided prior to termination.
You're aware that severance is commonly proportional to length of service, right?
Not length of expected lifetime after being fired.
Keeping one's mouth shut isn't a "service".
Neither is a non-compete clause, for that matter (which is illegal where I am), so better figure out how that is possible given that it perfectly fits your definition of "compensation contingent on provided service".
>Severance is compensation given up front in exchange for the labor/service of signing and following through with the severance agreement.
Calling putting a signature on a piece of paper and staying silent "labor" wins the Orwellian dictionary redefinition of the day for me.
Didn't know I was doing labor by doing nothing at all.
Pray tell, where do I get to perform such hard labor and get paid handsomely for it?
Hope the answer isn't "some of the companies that I performed labor for in the past" (in a normal, human, dictionary sense of the word "labor"), because the payment that you get after performing labor - and only after doing so - is called "compensation".
> The service to get a severance has been provided prior to termination
And here is the root of your misunderstanding.
You seem to be under the impression that because some companies occasionally scale severance based on tenure, it's comp for work already performed. Severance is like tipping in that it's not required at all.
Keeping one's mouth shut is a service. They're paying for it. So would be not competing with the company, if it were legal to enforce. Not sure why you think otherwise, just your personal vibes I guess? Maybe look up what an economic "service" is.
Maybe you're confused because as you say, no one has ever offered you money to keep your mouth shut?
This service only gets paid for when the recipient has credible things to say.
Similarly, some people get paid tons of money to just say their opinion, and here you are doing that labor for free too. The people getting paid have valuable information to offer, which someone else either does or does not want shared.
1) The US has run 13,000 missions over Iran in the last month. Thats a lot of targets.
2) The initial US degradation of Iraqi capabilities was much much greater in gulf war 1.
3) F15s are not stealth fighters.
4) This is 35 years later.
5) "strategic bombing" of air defenses is mostly accomplished with our cruise missiles. We'll take out any air defenses we find, but you don't fly non-stealth planes over SAM batteries intentionally.
We haven't even started a ground campaign. If one plane is downed per 13000 missions, I think we're doing ok.
It’s very likely their initial shock now wore off, and they got resupplied by putin and xi. We might start seeing much more damage going forward. US hasn’t fought a proxy war of this kind in many decades.
Weird that we can afford how many hundreds of thousands per bomb but can't be bothered to pay entry level wages to manually verify each site. I'm sure the DoD has access to something even better than Google Maps.
Does it matter, at this point? If you go and tell someone who’s lost their home and half their family in a strike, "oops, it was just bad intel", do they hate you less?
Yeah, but… I think if you’re bombing a child’s school because of bad intel, the deaths are on you either way. We’re not going to be like “oh, this war was necessary, which means it’s no biggie that you accidentally killed two hundred children because you didn’t do your DD”
I sometimes wonder if our modern philosophy of requiring intentionality for crimes is the wrong way. You can launder intentionality be not trying too hard. If you try really weakly, it's called negligence but even that isn't as morally bad as intentionality. Perhaps we should forget about trying to read the mind of a state or criminal and only judge them by their actions.
In my country, punishments for killing people with deliberate violence varies from 8 months home detention (bus driver punched a passenger in the face, knocking him out so he fell backward and cracked his head on the ground), to several decades (man grabbed scissors from the kitchen, ran to his ex girlfriend's room, and stabbed her repeatedly). Both victims are equally dead but the courts decided that the perpetrators' feelings mattered far more than what they did. Perhaps if the bus driver had been weaker and needed a weapon, he'd be in prison for 10 years instead of free? Perhaps if the ex-boyfriend had used his fists outdoors on a concrete pavement, he'd be free? Seems grossly unfair.
If you've been paying attention you'd understand that (1) the US military brass has been almost entirely replaced by MAGA stooges who think the rapture is real and (2) Trump and co 100% thought they could Maduro-esque behead the IRGC and this would be over in a week. The military officials who (correctly) dare not attack Iran aren't in any positions of power any longer.
God created war so that Americans would learn geography. Like Trump's obsession with Greenland because he does not understand the Mercator projection...
First iPhone was 18 years ago, but yeah it around the time of the first iPhone. IIRC he actually mentioned that because he had already been confronted to Apple’s lockdown before the iPhone. It was a long time ago and I was young, so I don’t remember the details.
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