Bryan Johnson Commits Another Unfair Labor Practice in NY Mag Article

I have filed yet another charge.

Background

On March 21, the New York Times published a piece about Bryan Johnson’s use of confidentiality, non-disparagement, and non-disclosure agreements to prevent his employees from speaking out about his employment practices. Three of my clients, acting in concert with one another, participated in the piece and thereby publicized their working conditions in a way that is protected by Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act. Those same clients had also previously filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board alleging that these agreements violate the NLRA.

On the same day that the piece came out, Johnson released a misleading video that did not respond to the content of the New York Times piece but instead attacked one of the former employees who participated in the story, Taryn Southern.

On March 31, Johnson had one of his lawyers send a cease-and-desist letter threatening to take legal action against Southern for things she said about Johnson and even for things she didn’t say about Johnson but that he nevertheless thought was about him, e.g. when she criticized Harvey Weinstein and Sean “Diddy” Combs for using non-disclosure agreements. The letter also tries to scare Southern away from posting additional videos about her ex-employer. This kind of legal threat is an unfair labor practice and so, on April 1, I filed an additional charge against Johnson for sending it.

New York Magazine Piece

A few days later, Matt Stieb wrote a piece at New York Magazine about the case. The article does a good job of humorously explaining what the conflict is all about. At one point in the piece, Johnson defends his use of these speech-restricting employment agreements:

He stands by his ways: When it comes to NDAs in the workplace, “I think that more people should do this,” he said.

“The Times reports that somehow my use of NDAs is nefarious, that it’s somehow an evil plan to silence people,” Johnson said. “It’s actually the exact opposite. When people show up, I say, ‘Here is what our work environment is like, this is what we say, this is what we do, and this is what happens if you don’t like this. You do not have to work here.’”

This is not an accurate description of how he used the non-disparagement agreement in question. He did not just present it to workers when they were initially employed. He gave it to workers to sign after they were already working there.

The agreement features a long list of activities Johnson might engage in or require his employees to engage in — including “routine exposure to imagery and an in-person environment where Bryan, as well as others on the Blueprint protocol, wear little and sometimes no clothing/no underwear; proximity to discussions for media production including erotica (for example, fan fiction including but not limited to story lines/ideas informed by the Twilight series and/or 50 Shades of Grey)” — and then states that:

By choosing to sign this Opt-In Agreement, I hereby agree that I will not find or assert that the Activities are unwelcome, offensive, humiliating, hostile, unprofessional, triggering, or abusive, nor will I claim that the Activities unreasonably interfere with my work performance.

Workers have a right to criticize their working conditions in precisely this way and it is illegal to make workers agree that they will not do so. This is the subject of the unfair labor practice charges that were filed prior to the New York Times story being published.

Another Unfair Labor Practice

Workers also have a right to criticize the agreement itself as they did in the March 21 New York Times piece. Responding to such criticism by saying that, if workers don’t like the agreement or the working conditions listed in the agreement, they “do not have to work here,” as Johnson did in the New York Magazine piece, is yet another unfair labor practice.

The most recent Board case on this is Starbucks Corporation, 373 NLRB No. 123 (2024):

Indeed, for decades, and in a variety of circumstances, the Board has recognized that employer suggestions, in response to employees’ union or protected concerted activity, that if the employees are unhappy they should seek employment elsewhere reasonably tend to coerce employees from exercising their rights under the Act.

This morning I filed an additional unfair labor practice charge against Johnson for making this coercive statement.