Requiring Big Tech employees to sign broad nondisclosure agreements (NDA) is outrageous, if not illegal, according to at least one attorney.
“Big tech companies try to use confidentiality agreements to harness these employees,” said attorney Joseph M. Alioto. “They've acted towards them like the middle-ages. They think these employees are serfs but they’re not.”
Alioto was reacting to a California Superior Court judge’s decision last week that Google’s NDAs are too broad and as a result they violate California labor laws, according to media reports.
“These employees could not speak about their jobs to other potential employers, which is absolutely wrong,” Alioto told the Southern California Record. “That is a real restraint of trade on labor. To me it's quite clear and it does in fact amount to a noncompete clause and noncompete clauses are not legal in California and they're not legal in a lot of places.”
The lawsuit was filed on Dec. 20, 2016 in San Francisco Superior Court alleging violations of the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) by the state of California and an unidentified Google employee who worked as a product manager, according to the complaint, which was signed by attorney Chris Baker.
“These employees have special expertise and if they're not available to a lot of other people when they want to seek it, then that is a restraint on innovation, competition and labor,” Alioto said. “The only thing that an employer can require an employee to do is not reveal a trade secret and a trade secret has specific elements that it is new, that it is of value and that there are protections in the market that they're taking against it.”
Alioto filed his own lawsuit against Google and Apple this month alleging they secretly and fraudulently agreed not to compete with each other in the internet search business in exchange for billions of dollars.
“For our country to work, we have to have a strong base of employees and a free enterprise system and we can't be cutting off employees or treating them like serfs,” he said. “The middle ages are over.”
The judge stopped short of ruling on plaintiff allegations that Google's confidentiality agreements prevent whistleblowing and the sharing of salary data with co-workers, according to media reports.
"A whistleblower is a person who is aware of a crime and under no circumstances could they be prohibited from revealing the fact of a crime that was either committed or was being committed," Alioto added.