Dear Governor Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins, Speaker of the Assembly Heastie, and Members of the Legislature:

We are a coalition of survivors and organizations that are dedicated to protecting workers from abuse in the workplace. We urge you to support and enact the ‘Stop Silencing Survivors Act’ (Gounardes S8914/ Gonzaléz-Rojas A2555) , a bill to allow workers to speak freely about their experiences in the workplace.

Although New York has made significant strides in protecting victims of sexual harassment, assault, workplace discrimination, retaliation and wage theft, our laws still allow harmful non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to be included in settlement agreements and in employment contracts. This practice hinders the enforcement of employee rights.

Under current law, employers may continue to embed broad NDAs in employment contracts, while a settlement may only include an NDA if it is the victim's preference. In practice, many survivors of workplace toxicity are pressured into signing an NDA in order to receive a settlement award. Most employees face a tremendous power imbalance in negotiations with their employers. Acting alone, even with counsel, they cannot afford to refuse an employer’s insistence that they “prefer” an NDA in exchange for settlement. While many survivors prefer not to disclose their experiences publicly, NDAs deny them that choice and often prohibit them from even speaking with a family member or close friend about their experience. NDAs prevent survivors from speaking publicly about their experiences, if they so choose, and often prohibit survivors from warning colleagues about a workplace predator. As recent high-profile cases have shown, these silencing mechanisms force survivors into perpetual silence, while further enabling predatory and toxic behavior.

The ‘Stop Silencing Survivors Act’ (S8914/A10021) bars employers from including a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) and/or non-disparagement agreement in a waiver, settlement, agreement, or other resolution to an alleged violation of the human rights law or labor law. The bill ensures that survivors are protected from both non-disclosure and non-disparagement settlement agreements to speak freely about their work experience if and when they choose. It does not ban NDAs for trade secrets or monetary settlement amounts.

Under this legislation:


• All public and private employers across New York State, and all prospective, current, and former employees, independent contractors, paid and unpaid interns and volunteers are covered

• Employers are prevented from including an NDA or non-disparagement agreement in a waiver, settlement, agreement or other resolution to an alleged violation of the human rights law or labor law

• Flexibility is provided for survivors to request privacy from an employer, including the protection of their identity and circumstances related to the complaint

• Settlement amounts are allowed to remain confidential

• Settlement agreements are required be in the primary language of the worker

• Employers are prohibited from requiring a prospective employee to sign away their right to speak about workplace experiences or future discrimination as a condition of employment

• Employers are allowed to keep proprietary information such as trade secrets and related work product confidential

• Employers are required to notify employees in NDA employment contracts of their right to file claims with appropriate agencies

The ‘Stop Silencing Survivors’ Act (S8914/A10021) will align New York with Washington, New Jersey, and California, which have all recently passed legislation to ban NDAs for toxic workplace issues. The legislation is strong, fair and comprehensive and, if passed, will ensure that the freedom to disclose abuse in the workplace is truly available to all employees in New York State. We urge you to support this important bill.

Respectfully,
(list of supporters as of XXX date)