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CTPP315B

Welcome back to Connecticut Power of Politics. I'm Mark Sudall. We are continuing our conversation with Gretchen and Julie about some of these nondisclosure agreements. Gretchen, let me ask you, what are the consequences of NDAs? Well, the consequences are that you never own your own story for the rest of your life. I mean, we haven't even begun to investigate and research what this does to the mental health of the millions of people across our country who have signed these nondisclosure agreements. As I mentioned earlier, Julie and I will never own our own stories. You mentioned that there's been a movie made about my story and Julie's story, also a miniseries. We couldn't participate in that. We can't even tell you if the portrayals of us were. Accurate or not. That's how strong and stringent these non-disclosures are. So we may never own our own stories, but we are very determined to make sure that other people do. So, from mental health to not being able to talk about horrible things that may have happened to you at work, or to the idea that you can't Warn other people that this kind of behavior is going on at work. I mean, that, that is incredibly important because at Fox, Julie and I couldn't talk about this. We couldn't warn one another. We were made to feel like we were completely alone in what was happening to us. And so there are vast consequences for not being able to own your own story. Julie, what should workers be looking for in their contract? They should be looking for everything that has the word confidentiality in it, nondisclosure agreement in it, arbitration in it, and they should look very carefully to see what that encompasses because I had to sign an NDA once, uh, not at Fox, but elsewhere that I thought was just a means to protect proprietary information. In fact, what it really meant is that I could not discuss anything at any time whatsoever, and those were literally direct words. That I saw or witnessed or experienced in that organization. That's incredibly broad, that is so broad that I could not even tell you that I had a nondisclosure agreement with that organization. It also tells tells you that I could not even tell you that I worked for that organization, although I was a very forward facing public person within that organization. And so I think when people sign these onboarding documents, they think this is just standard language and they think that this is just to protect proprietary information, but it's so much more than that very often and so it's very important for people. To really very carefully look at what they're signing. If they can take it to a lawyer, great, I acknowledge that that is a very expensive proposition for a lot of people. So just take a look at it yourself and then go and speak to HR and ask HR whether um they can maybe remove this language if it's too onerous, but This really should not be on the worker, and that's very important to know. One worker should not be able to be in a position where they have to go to their boss and say, you know, I don't want to sign this because you're you're automatically kind of labeled as a troublemaker if you do, it's up to companies to do the right thing, to release their workers from the silencing epidemic, to ensure that their workers have the morale to know that if something bad happens to them. They can talk about it with their husband, with their wife, with their priest, with their rabbi, with their therapist. Very often you can't even do that with their coworkers who may be experiencing the very same thing, you know, when Gretchen was going through what she was going through with Fox and I was going through what I was going through with Fox, we could not talk to each other about it, so we had no idea that anybody else was going through something that we were going through. And that's devastating because you really feel isolated, you feel alone, and that's really the purpose of these silencing mechanisms to really make people feel that they're on their own, and that's not the way to run a business, especially in this day and age, especially as Gretchen pointed out, with a generation coming up into the workforce that wants more transparency, and well, it's just not going to put up with this kind of behavior anymore. Gretchen, you and Julie did some new polling from your nonprofit Lift Our Voices. What did you find? We found that when people understand how vast these nondisclosures are in the state of Connecticut, they don't like them. I mean, Republicans and Democrats, independents, if you look at all those different segments, they all by majority say that they believe that their members of the government should be doing more to not silence workers in the state of Connecticut. Also, a very interesting point, Mark, that I want to point out because we live in such a hyper political. right now is that outlawing NDAs, it turns out, is a coalition builder between Democrats and Republicans. Based on what I just said, the majority in both parties, the majority of constituents believe that they should not be this vast, that they shouldn't silence people. So this is a way that we could actually come together in an incredibly difficult time for us as a fractured nation. Julie, are you finding that other states are saying their leaders should be doing more to protect against discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace? Absolutely. Look, um, the New Jersey law, which was the first law to pass in 2019, has been deeply successful, has not impacted corporations in any negative way whatsoever. We have studies that Penn State conducted that proved that. California, which has one of the world's largest economies all on its own, has done this successfully. It hasn't impacted them. Washington State has done it. It has not impacted them, and New York State is looking at it right now. New York State already has an NDA ban. They're just trying to uh expand it at the moment. So look, Connecticut should not be an outlier here. When the tri-state area, when you've got two states of the tri-state area that have varying degrees of NDA bands, Connecticut should not be on its own and silencing its workers. It it's with all the industry in Connecticut, with all the progress in Connecticut, it is so important for Connecticut to join New Jersey and New York in giving workers back their voice. Gretchen, talk to us about the importance of education about these agreements and empowering women. It's just so important that people understand what they're signing. And you know, I'll put myself right out there and say that with my last contract at Fox News, they put in, uh, an NDA and a forced arbitration clause, and I had signed a lot of contracts over my time as a journalist. And I asked my lawyer and my agent at the time, you know, what, what, what does this mean? Should I sign this? And they said something very eerie to me now, which was, don't worry about it, it's becoming the way of the world. And unfortunately they were right because 82% of all Americans now have forced arbitration clauses in their contracts, which means they cannot sue. They cannot go to an open court. Instead you go to a secret chamber called arbitration. One third of all Americans, as Julie pointed out, on the first day of work sign nondisclosure. I apologize. I apologize, we're out of time. Thank you both for the time. Thank you so much.

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Tuesday marked five years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization made it official. There were already 118,000 cases in 114 countries, and COVID had killed more than 4000 people. Less than a week later, the shutdowns began. This week we remember two COVID patients who survived when the pandemic first started. Rodney Davis from Bridgeport got a hero's welcome in 2022 when he returned to Saint Vincent's Medical Center. He was the hospital's first COVID patient. Davis was in a coma for two months. He survived and thanked the heroes that saved him. I'm a miracle. They are my angels and they saved my life, and I'm here today to share this story with everyone. This is John. Chris Tillett from Wilton was Connecticut's first COVID patient. He was in a medically induced coma for 10 days at Danbury Hospital. A year later, he thanked the staff for saving his life. You guys cared for my emotional side too, like having music being played in my room and then having photos of my son. On the wall. According to the World Health Organization and Johns Hopkins, the United States has had 103 million total confirmed cases and counting since the start of the pandemic, and here in Connecticut, 976,000 cases. COVID has killed more than 1.2 million people here in the US and more than 12,000 people in Connecticut. COVID continues to kill more people than influenza, although the flu has hospitalized more people in the US this winter. Here in Connecticut, Governor Lamont says our state has come a long way. I think we're better prepared in the sense that um. We keep a look at our stockpile. We're working hard with our departments of public health. We have a very close relationship with the hospitals, so all that was reestablished and put in place, uh, 5 years ago. And experts say we are better prepared, but there are still COVID cases and there will always be new variants. One thing is certain, the world will experience other pandemics likely within our lifetime. Well, that's all our time. I'm Mark Sudall. Thanks for watching.

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Former Fox News hosts Gretchen Carlson and Julie Roginsky join the show discuss a possible ban on non-disclosure agreements in Connecticut. 

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Former Fox News hosts Gretchen Carlson and Julie Roginsky join the show discuss a possible ban on non-disclosure agreements in Connecticut.

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