The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
issued a decision in McLaren Macomb impacting employee severance agreements. An
NLRB statement around the decision noted that “employers may not offer employees severance agreements that require employees to broadly waive their rights under the National Labor Relations Act. The decision involved severance agreements offered to furloughed employees that prohibited them from making statements that could disparage the employer and from disclosing the terms of the agreement itself.”
The decision reverses the previous Board’s decisions in Baylor University Medical Center and IGT d/b/a International Game Technology, issued in 2020, which abandoned prior precedent in finding that offering similar severance agreements to employees was not unlawful, by itself.
Whenever drafting severance agreements, it is recommended to seek qualified counsel. More on the NLRB ruling can be found
here.