March 5, 2025 • 36 mins
International Women’s Day on March 8 is a day to celebrate the achievements of women, and consider where progress is still needed. On this episode of ESG Currents, senior ESG analyst Rob Du Boff chats with journalist and Lift Our Voices cofounder Gretchen Carlson about how forced arbitration and nondisclosure agreements are used to silence victims of workplace misconduct, why this is a risk for both investors and employees, her own experience with this problem and the work of her organization to end it.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
ESG has become established as a key business theme as
companies and investors seek to navigate the climate crisis, energy transition,
social mega trends, mounting regulatory attention and pressure from other stakeholders.
The rapidly evolving landscape has become inundated with acronyms, buzzwords
and lingo, and we aim to break these down with
industry experts. Welcome to ESG Currents, your guide to navigating
(00:32):
the evolving ESG space, one topic at a time. Brought
to you by Bloomberg Intelligence, part of Bloomberg's research department,
with five hundred analysts and strategists or getting across all
major world markets. Our coverage includes over two thousand equities
and credits, as well as outlooks on more than ninety
industries and one hundred market indices, currencies and commodities. I'm
(00:53):
Rob Duboff, senior ESG analysts for Bloomberg Intelligence. This week
we celebrate International Women's Day at Day four quote, celebrating
the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. And
while there certainly is a lot to celebrate out loud,
there's a lot of distress out there that has been
silenced as the Me Too movement gained international attention nearly
(01:15):
a decade ago. We saw the fallout of toxic work
cultures far too often masked by forced arbitration and non
disclosure agreements. These issues obviously have major consequences for society,
but they also have financial risks attached. As any investor
in Fox News parent company, twenty first Century Fox would know,
today's guest knows that situation very well. Former Fox News
(01:38):
journalist Gretchen Carlson was instrumental in bringing this issue to
national attention. She's also the co founder of the nonprofit
Lift our Voices, which works with organizations, workers, elected officials,
and other stakeholders regarding the effect of silencing mechanisms and
encourages decision makers at companies to end their use of
(01:58):
such clauses. Lift Our Voices also collaborates on quantitative and
qualitative research to study the effects of silencing mechanisms on
organizations and workers. And welcome.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Great to be with you, Rob, Thank you for having
me awesome.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
So, for our listeners who may not be familiar, can
you give us a brief background about your career and
your experience with the me too movement?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
How much time do you have, Well, it's already been almost,
you know, nine years ago. Hard to believe. Sometimes it
feels like yesterday. Sometimes it feels like eons ago. But
almost nine years ago. On July sixth and twenty sixteen,
I jumped off the cliff and I sued the chairman
and CEO former of Fox News, Roger Als, for sexual harassment.
(02:45):
And you know, at the time, that was groundbreaking.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
It made international news.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
I had no idea what was going to happen to
me from one minute to the next, quite honestly, but
it turned into this massive movement that we call the
me Too movement. And there were so many other people
that I want to credit to as well. I mean,
it's not just s Gretchen Carlson deciding to come forward,
But I think my case helped to insticate, instigate the
(03:15):
idea that you could come forward. And then with social
media and you know, being something new, relatively new, since
a big case came forward, it just exploded. And I
really realized soon after I came forward that I needed
to do something to fix the problem. Because Rob I
realized that there was an epidemic of sexual misconduct in
(03:38):
the workplace. But then I realized soon thereafter that there
was an epidep of silencing people who come forward, and
that's when I decided to worl up my sleeves and
get to work and try to change policies. So what
I figured out was that there's something wonky called forced arbitration,
which people have no idea what the hell that is, okay,
(03:58):
And then there are course of non disclosure agreements, which
people have some understanding of, but quite honestly, they think
that they're usually signing them at work just to protect
trade secrets, and they've become so much greater in expansion
over the last four decades. And so those were the
two things that I really started working on, initially on
(04:19):
Capitol Hill to try and change the laws. And then
I eventually formed my nonprofit Lift Our Voices, to serve
as the umbrella organization over all the work that I
was already doing legislatively, but then you know, bringing in
education and bringing in research that you alluded to, and
so we've really just been keeping the movement alive and
we've had massive success as the only organization doing this
(04:41):
work in the country.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Awesome, And can you talk maybe a little about the
work you do and some of the successes you have.
I mean, we'll get to the legislative pieces in a bed,
but you know, I would love to hear some examples
of some of the great work you're doing.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Well.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
First of all, we are one of the very few
organizations doing re search in this area. Number One, it's
hard to research NDAs, for example, because people can't even
tell you that they had them. I mean, you know,
they've been thrown into silence. So it's hard to find
these people to research just how prevalent they are. But
also because nobody gave a damn quite honestly until this movement.
(05:19):
You know, I've been a journalist for more than thirty years,
and I can attest to the fact that if somebody
had brought up a sexual harassment case, you know, and
how NDAs affect them in the newsroom ten years ago,
everyone would have been like ho hum.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
You know.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
So once we got into this and the media, to
the credit of the media, they covered these stories, thankful
because it really, you know, shone a light on exactly
how pervasive it was. But research is essential because when
you're trying to move the needle with anything in life,
people say to you, show me the numbers, show me
(05:55):
how this adds up, show me why people care, and
so at lift our voices. We've been able to do
at least five major research projects over the last five
years that really have been benchmarks in showing how pervasive
these mechanisms are. One and number two the great effects
(06:15):
they have on not only the mental health of people
who have to sign them and be forever in silence,
but also in getting justice. The idea that all of
these cases are being pushed to secrecy and silence. You know,
one wouldn't be too surprised to find out that that
means most of the people aren't getting justice. And so research,
(06:39):
whether I'm talking to legislators or I'm talking to CEOs
of companies, it's so crucial because they want to see
the proof, and so we're the organization that has been
able to provide that. So that's really important. Education is
also just key, because, as I alluded to in the beginning,
people don't know what these things are. You know, eighty
(06:59):
four percent of all American workers are signing forced arbitration
clauses on their first.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Day of work.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Eighty four percent of us Now that has exploded in
nineteen ninety one, only two percent of us side now,
so this has been something that has expanded out of control.
Why because it's a great way to cover up dirty laundry.
When people come forward with something bad happening to them
at work and they have a forced arbitration clause, they
(07:28):
ain't going to court, they're not going to have the
ability to make it even public. And so this has
been a way for companies to push you and rights
violations violating which.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Are legal, you know, out of the justice system.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
And there's a million reasons why that's wrong and why
the system is rigged against you from the beginning. So
educating people on what they're signing.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Is just crucial.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
So those you know two elements are and then I
would just say the third thing, other than my huge
legislative work, is mobilizing especially the younger generation to understand
what these things are because we all know gen Z
cares more about social impact and social issues than other generations,
both men and women, by the way, and they want
(08:17):
to come together to find solutions for these kinds of things.
And they also want transparency at work. And if you
tell them that the company, if they have a choice
between company A and Company B, and one's going to
silence them forever if anything happens to them, and the
other isn't. I can guarantee you gen Z's picking the latter.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
And so.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
We're making great strides in trying to mobilize students, trying
to educate them before they get into the real world,
so that they start asking questions to say, why am
I signing this? And do I need to have these
clauses in these contracts so that we can hopefully normalize
getting rid of them, kind of like paternity leave. Like
(09:00):
fifteen years ago that was taboo, right, right said it,
but it was Now more and more men are taking
paternity lead and they're normalizing it. Right, That's what we're
hoping to do with four star bitration and NDAs.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
It's interesting that you talk about how pervasive it is now.
I mean, I remember with my first job, you know,
I signed an NDA and I just assumed it was
to not talk about the secret sauce that the firm
was using. But then it came to be that, you know,
as not to date myself. But as message forwards became
more popular and people were talking about maybe their bad
experiences working there, and suddenly, you know, legal would send
(09:35):
a memos and remember, you signed this document that says
you can't say anything, you know, things that you were
just kind of the normal griping, let alone some of
the horrible things that may go on in certain workplaces.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
So it's so important to change laws, which is the
fourth trunch of work we do, because that actually forces
people to change their behavior. And you know, I often
say this statement, which is one of the more profound
things that I've come up with over the last nine years,
which is, you know, I passed to bipartisan laws in
(10:09):
twenty twenty two, in the most hyper political time of
our generation. That was easier than changing culture. Changing culture
in America to stop treating people who have the courage
to come forward about bad behavior at work as high
as changing that is more difficult than passing laws in
(10:32):
this era of politics like we've never seen before. Yeah,
so you know, we can get to why, what the
reasons are for that, other than I would just from
high level, it's because we instill in our young people
at a very early age values and morals and what
we think about these types of things, and so that's
(10:54):
very ingrained in people, and then it's very hard for
companies to their behavior as well, because this system has
been working for them, or so they thought, but now
times are changing. And so I often say to them,
you know, the train has left the station. Join my
join me. I'll help you join me, and I'll help
(11:14):
you become more transparent, because you're not going to be
able to attract employees anymore. The more we go on
with this movement and this work and changing laws, you're
going to be behind. And so this is the message
that I try. Might be scary at first, to become
more transparent. I get it, I'm not naive, but you're
better join now because you want to retain those kind
(11:37):
of people and they have a choice of where they
want to work these days. So these kinds of things
are very very important in cultural life of companies.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah, I think that gets into my next question. You know,
certainly at Bloomberg we can appreciate, you know, you guys
using a lot of data in this, but you know
a lot of Bloomberg listeners are investors. As an investor,
I care about profitability, I care about competitive positioning, I
care about interest rates. Why should an investor care about
our company's arbitration and NBA policies.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Because all this stuff is being shoved into secrecy, and
I'm here to tell you it's gonna it's gonna get
out anyway it is. Ye And look at let's just
use Fox as an example, and I you know, I
can't go into great detail. Ironically, I don't own my
own truth. Yea, that I have a massive nda, okay,
And I may never own my own truth, which actually
(12:30):
makes my whole movement very ironic because I fight every
day to make sure other people own their own truths.
But I made there's been a movie made about me
in a mini series, and I could have nothing to
do with it. I can't even tell you if.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
It was accurate or not.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
I don't own my own story, which is crazy. But
I work every day to make sure that everyone else does.
So why should an investor care? So if we just
look at Fox News, look at how all that came
to light, and the world discuss that millions and millions
of dollars had been paid out to people, not just
(13:05):
from Roger Hills, but from other high profile people at Fox.
And as an investor, that's a huge hit to the
bottom line.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
You should know. You should know about these payouts.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
But companies have a way hypothetically, I'm not talking about
Fox anymore, companies have a way to hide them, you know,
in their accounting and as a boardman, as an investor,
you your fuduciary responsibility is to know about that. Number one,
it shouldn't be hidden from you. Also, you know, when
(13:38):
a high profile person a company has something come out
about them, that can often lead to a stock drop,
It can lead to other people becoming involved in it
and having to leave the company. I mean, there there
are a million reasons why board members and investors should
want to have the company lead a culture of more
(13:59):
transparency so that things are not hidden, and then you
suddenly have this bombshell that comes out. The last thing
I'd say is that right now, we do everything back
ass works in companies. We spend millions of dollars in
insurance policies to try to figure out how to protect
people from these kinds of claims.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Right what we should be doing.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Is as companies, we should be investing that money in
becoming more transparent because you know, if you think about it,
if you're an investor, or, you're on board, or you're
the CEO, you can change the culture you can. You
can come into the company and you can say we're
not going to silence our people anymore. We believe that's wrong.
(14:44):
We're going to take the hits that come with that.
But if we change the culture from the top and
say we're going to actually honor people who come forward
and tell us about bad actors, and then instead of
paying millions for insurance policies to protect those bad actors
and make sure it's all secret so they get to
stay on the job, we're going to actually push out
(15:05):
the bad actors and we're going to keep the person
who had the courage to come forward, because one thing
I'm going to tell you is that person more than
likely is a woman or a person of color. And
those are the exact people that you want to retain
if nothing else to increase your bottom Every study has
shown Yeah, so you're pushing out the exact people that
(15:29):
you want through these silencing mechanisms. And if you come
in and say you're going to change the culture from
the top down, that has a massive impact on the
kind of people you employ, on the kind of behaviors
you have at work, on the kind of policies you have,
and the.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Retention of good people.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
So that's my message to investors, to board members, to CEOs,
Let's change the culture because we can do this. It's
not that hard.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Yeah, And I would argue that's not just the payouts,
but it's kind of the process. You know, what are
you doing in place? You know, if I'm investing in
a widget company and you know every month ten percent
of the widgets are defective, I'd want to know, well,
what's going on with your manufacturing, what's going on with
your process that you know it's leading to so many issues.
So I think transparency certainly helps with that as well.
(16:18):
So your work on this issue actually first came to
my attention in twenty twenty one. I do a lot
of research on shareholder proposals, and that year you back
to shareholder proposal at Goldman Sachs asking the bank to
prepare and I'm going to quote here a public report
on the impact of the use of mandatory arbitration on
Golden Sacks employees and workplace culture. Now, the proposal actually
(16:40):
came up short by the narrowest of margins, I think,
probably the narrowest I've seen of a proposal that didn't pass,
And it was so close that Goldman actually agreed to
do it. Can you first of all talk about how
you got involved in that, how you were able to
rally that much support, and then ultimately, you know, what
are your thoughts about goldman subsequent actions.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah, so that was better during COVID and so I
am a shareholder of Goldman, so I could have gone
to the annual meeting in person, but it was it
was online and you can you can you can you know,
ask them or appeal to to be able to ask
questions and and so they did allow me to ask
a questions. Now it wasn't just me. There were a
(17:18):
lot of other organizations that were working behind the scenes
to try and get the question to the table, which
was what you just said, you know, why do you
use forced arbitration for your employees? And you know, would
you consider providing us a report about the impact of that?
And so I did get to ask my question. It
was very interesting because there there was a two minute
(17:41):
response to my question that was obviously pre pre prepared,
and it was all about how great forced arbitration is
for their employees. Now, keep in mind that as an organization,
we were speaking to people who worked at Goldman's acts
at the time, who had strinth stories about what was
going on, and so it was very disappointing actually to
(18:03):
hear that the board voted unanimously to not do anything
about this. But because the vote and it actually in
my book, we actually did get over the threshold and
fifty percent on that vote, I think that was a
surprise to Goldman and to other people. And you know
better than I do that with the shareholder proposals, even
(18:25):
if you're over fifty percent, the company doesn't have to
do anything right. But in this case, Goldman did decide
from public pressure. There were journalists covering the story, and
so they decided, i think, under public pressure to put
together a report. They released it right before Christmas that year,
and you know, they basically said that I think they
(18:46):
were going to look into it and change some policies.
You know, not much happened there, which brings me full
circle to why changing laws has much more impact than
shareholder proposals, even because the company doesn't have to do
the shareholders right. I mean, it never becomes very public
and there's a lot of pressure. In my line of work,
(19:07):
you can get a lot more done if you try
to pass laws.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
So speaking of laws, so that the two laws you
passed for our listeners are the Ending Forced Arbitration of
Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act and the Speak Out Act.
Can you talk about those?
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yeah, we should come up with a better name for
the first one. That's a mouthful, but we referred to
it as e FAA now and that was signed by
the President in March of twenty twenty two. This was
a five or six year journey for me. I started
working on this soon after my story and when I
again found out that this was an epidemic of silencing people,
(19:43):
and I started walking the halls of Congress and working
with a lot of organizations that had been fighting forced
arbortration for a long time. It was sort of like
this perfect storm because they had all the knowledge base
and I had the sort of celebrity story of what
had happened to me because I had a forced arbitration.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Law in my last contract at Box. That's how I.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Also became interested in it. It was a dark day
for me when my lawyers told me that I had
no case and I said, what are you talking about?
They said, you don't have a case, you have a
forced arbitration clause. I said, what's that? And I'm a
highly educated woman. I mean I went to Stamford and Oxford,
and I didn't understand.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
What it was.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
And they said, that means you can't make your case
public and we can't go to court, and nobody's ever
going to know whatever happened to you. Well, that's when
they came up with a strategy to sue Roger Hills. Personally,
we were trying to circumvent the forest arbitration clause, which
is the only reason that my case became public, and
it's arguably the only reason we're.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
In this movement.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
So, okay, I brought sort of this notoriety to forced arbitration,
and like I said, it was like a perfect storm
of coming together with these groups that had all the
knowledge base, and so we started working together, and you know,
slowly but surely, I knew I had to get Republicans
to pass the filibuster in the Senate. Democrats tend to
(21:04):
vote yes on all of these issues, so I really
had to get ten Republicans and it took me five years.
It took me five years. I strategically went after Republicans
who were retiring Republicans who have been more centrists Republicans
that I had maybe a closer relationship too, But it
(21:26):
took it took a long time, and when we finally
got there, you know, you have to you sort of
have to reassure that the Senate majority leader that you
have a bipartisan vote. And so at that point, you know,
we were able to move it forward to try and
bring it to the floor, and we were doing it
in the House at the same time, which you know,
(21:47):
adds heft to a bill because look, if you're getting
bipartisan support in both chambers, the likelihood of it becoming
law is much higher. And so, actually the vote happened
in the House first, and it was overwhelming. I mean,
we had over one hundred and twenty Republicans voting on
this yes. And then a few days later unanimously voted
(22:08):
yes in the Senate. And you know, this was just.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
A huge moment for me personally.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Because it just was so emotional because I had changed
something that had affected so many people and it was
going to give justice to so many people in the future.
And you know, it's being called the biggest labor law
change in the last one hundred years. Yeah, so what
this means is if you have a forced arbitration clause,
(22:36):
and likely you do in your workplace contract or even
your handbook, or you've clicked on an email accepting it,
you no longer have to go to the secret chamber
of forced arbitration for any sexual misconduct plane at work,
including contractors, gig workers, interns. So this is revolutionary. I
(22:57):
mean we're hearing from people now. The laws only in
an effect for three years. I can't we're trying to
do research now on how many people we've helped, but
it's a lot. On our website, you can go and
listen to our love Justice campaign where you see videos
of people who are so faint because they are able
(23:17):
now to get justice and go to court instead of
being thrown into secret arbitration. So this is having massive impact.
And then a short eight months later we were able
to pass the Speakout Act, which gets rid of predisputed
NDAs for sexualist conduct also.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
In the workplace.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
And the only reason that was able to happen so
quickly is because we had already built this bipartisan coalition
and we were able to go back to them again
and say, look, NDAs are also bad, and so you
know we were able to pass that. We do have
a third bill which goes back to the arbitration bill,
and it would add in age discrimination so that you
(23:55):
wouldn't be forced into age discrimination, which by the way,
is anyone over forty, which is of us. And that
would mean that you could also seek justice for that.
That was the next thing we could get the Republicans
to get on board with. But as an organization, we
believe in getting rid of NBA's and forced arbitration for
every protected class, so that would include race, gender, disability,
(24:18):
LGBTQ plus etc.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Yeah, I mean, I guess I always just assume that,
you know, oh, these things can't apply if there's something
illegal going on. But I was wrong.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Yeah. Never.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
The intent of forced arbitration, by the way, I mean
for starbitration we all know, is to unclog the court systems.
It was like if you had a small business dispute
over three hundred blucks, you know, instead of going in
front of a judge, everyone would probably agree, yeah, just
go to arbitration. Right. It was never supposed to adjudicate
human rights viirations, but companies started realizing that it was
a secret process and they were like Wow, maybe we
(24:52):
could throw these kinds of cases into secrecy, and once
that started, it just loaded and nobody was shining a
light on it, you know, because people don't understand it,
and they really don't get it until something bad happens
to them, and then it's too late.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
So you started the conversation down the political baths. I'll continued.
The new administration has really set its sight on DEI.
I saw a couple of weeks ago the FDIIC actually
had a pause it search for an anti sexual harassment
trainer because of the executive order on DEI. Now, certainly
there are elements of the culture wars involved and the
diversity and equity pieces, but setting those aside, I think
(25:31):
conclusion would be much less controversial, particularly as it revolves
around in appropriate conduct in the workplace. And is there
a risk that with the DEI rollback, we're seeing that
maybe some of the mechanisms that have been put in
place in the corporate world to curb sexual harassment could
wind up on the chopping block.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah, I mean that could be a reality. I tend
to wake up every day optimistic because I have to,
and you know, look, our issues, our issues, we don't
necessarily put into the DEI bucket because we really believe
that this is a worker's rights issue because while forced
(26:10):
arbitration and NDAs have a higher prevalence with women and
people of color in the workplace, white men are also
affected by this right. So you know, when you figure
that fifty five percent of all white men are affected
by forced arbitration and NDAs, this is really not a
DEI issue. This is a worker's right issue about transparency.
(26:35):
So you know, again, I'm not naive enough to think
that we might not face some backlash because of the
administration's attacks on DEI, But we're shouting from the mountaintops
that you know, this affects everybody. Everybody should be concerned
about this, and it's not just people who fall into
the DEI bucket.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Yeah, and I think maybe that's one of the problems.
You know, I've seen in ESG, I've seen in DEI
that there's different issues that have different impacts and they
just to get that cut little lacronym, we'll throw it together.
Whereas you know, again, inclusion is completely different and making
sure that you have a safe, collaborative work environment is
different from you know, trying to get diversity into the workplace,
(27:15):
and I do worry that some of that nuance make
it a loft. So you just launched the Love where
You Work Index. Can you talk about that and what
you're hoping to accomplish with it.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah, So this is a survey that we are sending
out to the companies in the Russell three thousand, and
it's a very simple survey. It's ten questions. It basically
gets to the heart of the matter. Do you use
for st arbitration? And do you use NDAs for things
greater than proprietary information? And we are hoping to get
the responses and build an index from those responses for
(27:51):
a couple of reasons. Number one, so that we can
provide a resource for the millions of American workers to
be able to come to our our website at Liftourvoices
dot org and see which companies use these mechanisms. It's
a huge question that we get all the time. Rob
you know, how do I know if my company's safety
And so that's the main reason we were doing it.
(28:13):
The other is because we're trying to find out exactly
how many companies out there are doing this. We know
it's a lot, but we want to also honor the
companies that are not doing this, So eventually we would
build out a scoring system as well, and companies who
are not using these mechanisms would get an A from us,
and that would be a big pr boon for them.
(28:34):
So we're especially hoping that those companies respond to our survey.
The third big reason is because we're using it as
a soft nudged companies who are currently not doing the
right thing to do the right thing, because if they
need a score from us, that's not a good one.
You know, it will be a soft nudge in the
direction of hey, you know, join with us will help you.
(28:58):
And it's not like we're going to go out and
put the blow up rat, you know, out in front
of their their offices like they do in New York
City to try and mention, you know, we're doing this
in a very genteel way, but it is a soft
nudge to have companies do self examination and introspection about
changing their policies. The other thing I would mention about
(29:18):
the Love Where You Work Index Rob is that nobody
else is doing this. Nobody else has ever surveyed companies
on their use of silencing mechanisms. And we see these
kind of surveys out there all over the place. Best
place is to work, you know, the Deloitte study about
women at work, the McKinsey study. Nobody is asking our questions,
(29:39):
no one. Part of the reason is because they don't
want to ruffle companies feathers. And so that's why at
Lift our Voices we decided to do it ourselves.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
And what's the responsement from companies or is it still
too early.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
That so we're still out in the field with it
right now. Again, we're not naive to think that a
ton of companies are going to feel this out in
the first year, especially if they're not doing the right thing.
But we had to start somewhere. And you know, we,
as I said, are the only organization doing this work
in the country, and so you know, we're very proud
(30:13):
of the fact that we were able to launch this.
I will mention that Melinda Gates, her foundation Pivotal Ventures,
is the one that's funding this for us, and so
you know, this is something that is important to them,
and it's important to us, and it's important.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
To everything fantastic. Now, looking forward, where does Lift our
Voices go from here? What's the next for you.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
As I know, you know, when we passed those two laws,
a lot of people thought our work was done because
they were like, hey, you solved it for sexual mystic
and I was like, yeah, if look at were that
easy because we work for all these other protected classes
as well. You know, It's it's kind of like if
you envision yourself at work in a cubicle and you're
facing sexual misconducts, so you don't have to be forced
(30:56):
into silence anymore with or starbutation or NBA's right, but
the person sitting in the cubicle next to you is
facing gender or race discrimination and they find out, oh, wow,
you don't have to be forced into silence, but I do. Right.
That's what we're hoping is going to start happening to
help propel the rest of our work forward. So, as
(31:18):
I mentioned, we have an age discrimination for st arbitration
bill in the pipeline, and so we're hoping that that
will eventually move into introducing bills for tender discrimination and
forest arbitration and race discrimination and disability, et cetera. We
also work at the state level, and so so far
three states have banned NDAs for all toxic workplace issues.
(31:42):
So if you live in New Jersey, California, or Washington State,
you cannot be forced to sign an NDA at work
for anything bad that happens to you. Atlift our voices.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
We have also.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Introduced similar legislation in New York at Connecticut. So imagine
if that passes in New York, for example, I mean
the biggest employee base, the biggest employer base, it would
be a massive game changer. And one thing I'll add
is that sometimes the state law work can be more
profound than even the federal law work. Because after those
(32:14):
state bans happened with NDAs, companies that were based in
Washington and California, especially like Microsoft. For example, Microsoft realized
that they were going to have.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
A two tiered system for their employees.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
They're gonna have three states where you couldn't have NDAs,
and then they were going to have the rest of
the states where you could. But then what if their
workers traveled I'm business, right, and what if something happened there?
And by the way, is it fair to have some
of your employees silenced and some of them not. So
Microsoft decided to get rid of NDA's globally. Now lift
their voices. That's what we're hoping is going.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
To happen with every company.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
So the more states that we can get bills that
are passed for these NDA bans, the more impact we
can have. And it does have this dominant affect your companies.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Right, because I'm sure they don't want to have this
kind of balconized HR manual exactly.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
But one thing I'll just say for investors, board members,
employees to be aware of is that even though I've
been instrumental in passing these two federal laws and some
of these state laws, the companies don't have to tell
you about them, and they don't have to rewrite their contracts,
so they can still write in there a forced arbitration
(33:30):
claus and in many cases they're not going to parse
out sexual misconduct, right, They're not going to say, hey,
we're gonna we're gonna make you go to forest arbitration
for all these other things, but not sexual miscondent.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
So you have to know you.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Don't have to the same thing with NDAs, which brings
me full circle to why education is so important, right,
you know, so educating people and getting board members and
investors to care about this stuff is crucial and start
asking questions because that's how we eventually get.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
To the to the full transparency.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Amazing, thank you so much, or just about out the time,
but I did. I guess I didn't realize with the
movies that you weren't allowed to consult. But are you
at least allowed to say who who you liked better playing.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
You as it?
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Naomi Wats or Nicole kid Me?
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Even if I could, I wouldn't because I thought they
were you know, they're both fabulous actors and actresses, I
should say, And I would just say that, although I
can't comment on it, that it was incredibly flattering and
humbling to me that actresses of such high caliber would
want to take on these roles because they really brought,
(34:41):
you know, so much information forward about why these issues are.
And I actually have had a chance to become friendly
with Naomi Watts and and and you know, she has
been so kind to me and saying that, you know,
she could have never had the same bravery that I had,
even though she played played me as as an actress.
And I just think that them being able to play
(35:06):
these roles has really helped to move the needle.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
So I'll be forever grateful for that.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Yeah, and I will say for our listeners who haven't,
I would recommend both projects. It was bombshell and then
The Loudest Voice, The Loudest Voice. That's right, both great projects.
All right, well, thank you very much for your time today, correction,
and it was great hearing about these issues and the
important work you're doing.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Thank you so much for having me. And people can
get more information at Liftourvoices dot org.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
Perfect and listeners can also find more information on the
issues we're talking about on the Bloomberg terminal at BI
space ESG go. If you have an ESG quandary you
would like to ask bi's expert analysts or get more
info about our research, send us an email at ESG
Currents at Bloomberg dot net. And if you liked this episode,
please subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform,
ESG has become established as a key business theme as
companies and investors seek to navigate the climate crisis, energy transition,
social mega trends, mounting regulatory attention and pressure from other stakeholders.
The rapidly evolving landscape has become inundated with acronyms, buzzwords
and lingo, and we aim to break these down with
industry experts. Welcome to ESG Currents, your guide to navigating
(00:32):
the evolving ESG space, one topic at a time. Brought
to you by Bloomberg Intelligence, part of Bloomberg's research department,
with five hundred analysts and strategists or getting across all
major world markets. Our coverage includes over two thousand equities
and credits, as well as outlooks on more than ninety
industries and one hundred market indices, currencies and commodities. I'm
(00:53):
Rob Duboff, senior ESG analysts for Bloomberg Intelligence. This week
we celebrate International Women's Day at Day four quote, celebrating
the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. And
while there certainly is a lot to celebrate out loud,
there's a lot of distress out there that has been
silenced as the Me Too movement gained international attention nearly
(01:15):
a decade ago. We saw the fallout of toxic work
cultures far too often masked by forced arbitration and non
disclosure agreements. These issues obviously have major consequences for society,
but they also have financial risks attached. As any investor
in Fox News parent company, twenty first Century Fox would know,
today's guest knows that situation very well. Former Fox News
(01:38):
journalist Gretchen Carlson was instrumental in bringing this issue to
national attention. She's also the co founder of the nonprofit
Lift our Voices, which works with organizations, workers, elected officials,
and other stakeholders regarding the effect of silencing mechanisms and
encourages decision makers at companies to end their use of
(01:58):
such clauses. Lift Our Voices also collaborates on quantitative and
qualitative research to study the effects of silencing mechanisms on
organizations and workers. And welcome.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Great to be with you, Rob, Thank you for having
me awesome.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
So, for our listeners who may not be familiar, can
you give us a brief background about your career and
your experience with the me too movement?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
How much time do you have, Well, it's already been almost,
you know, nine years ago. Hard to believe. Sometimes it
feels like yesterday. Sometimes it feels like eons ago. But
almost nine years ago. On July sixth and twenty sixteen,
I jumped off the cliff and I sued the chairman
and CEO former of Fox News, Roger Als, for sexual harassment.
(02:45):
And you know, at the time, that was groundbreaking.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
It made international news.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
I had no idea what was going to happen to
me from one minute to the next, quite honestly, but
it turned into this massive movement that we call the
me Too movement. And there were so many other people
that I want to credit to as well. I mean,
it's not just s Gretchen Carlson deciding to come forward,
But I think my case helped to insticate, instigate the
(03:15):
idea that you could come forward. And then with social
media and you know, being something new, relatively new, since
a big case came forward, it just exploded. And I
really realized soon after I came forward that I needed
to do something to fix the problem. Because Rob I
realized that there was an epidemic of sexual misconduct in
(03:38):
the workplace. But then I realized soon thereafter that there
was an epidep of silencing people who come forward, and
that's when I decided to worl up my sleeves and
get to work and try to change policies. So what
I figured out was that there's something wonky called forced arbitration,
which people have no idea what the hell that is, okay,
(03:58):
And then there are course of non disclosure agreements, which
people have some understanding of, but quite honestly, they think
that they're usually signing them at work just to protect
trade secrets, and they've become so much greater in expansion
over the last four decades. And so those were the
two things that I really started working on, initially on
(04:19):
Capitol Hill to try and change the laws. And then
I eventually formed my nonprofit Lift Our Voices, to serve
as the umbrella organization over all the work that I
was already doing legislatively, but then you know, bringing in
education and bringing in research that you alluded to, and
so we've really just been keeping the movement alive and
we've had massive success as the only organization doing this
(04:41):
work in the country.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Awesome, And can you talk maybe a little about the
work you do and some of the successes you have.
I mean, we'll get to the legislative pieces in a bed,
but you know, I would love to hear some examples
of some of the great work you're doing.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Well.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
First of all, we are one of the very few
organizations doing re search in this area. Number One, it's
hard to research NDAs, for example, because people can't even
tell you that they had them. I mean, you know,
they've been thrown into silence. So it's hard to find
these people to research just how prevalent they are. But
also because nobody gave a damn quite honestly until this movement.
(05:19):
You know, I've been a journalist for more than thirty years,
and I can attest to the fact that if somebody
had brought up a sexual harassment case, you know, and
how NDAs affect them in the newsroom ten years ago,
everyone would have been like ho hum.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
You know.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
So once we got into this and the media, to
the credit of the media, they covered these stories, thankful
because it really, you know, shone a light on exactly
how pervasive it was. But research is essential because when
you're trying to move the needle with anything in life,
people say to you, show me the numbers, show me
(05:55):
how this adds up, show me why people care, and
so at lift our voices. We've been able to do
at least five major research projects over the last five
years that really have been benchmarks in showing how pervasive
these mechanisms are. One and number two the great effects
(06:15):
they have on not only the mental health of people
who have to sign them and be forever in silence,
but also in getting justice. The idea that all of
these cases are being pushed to secrecy and silence. You know,
one wouldn't be too surprised to find out that that
means most of the people aren't getting justice. And so research,
(06:39):
whether I'm talking to legislators or I'm talking to CEOs
of companies, it's so crucial because they want to see
the proof, and so we're the organization that has been
able to provide that. So that's really important. Education is
also just key, because, as I alluded to in the beginning,
people don't know what these things are. You know, eighty
(06:59):
four percent of all American workers are signing forced arbitration
clauses on their first.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Day of work.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Eighty four percent of us Now that has exploded in
nineteen ninety one, only two percent of us side now,
so this has been something that has expanded out of control.
Why because it's a great way to cover up dirty laundry.
When people come forward with something bad happening to them
at work and they have a forced arbitration clause, they
(07:28):
ain't going to court, they're not going to have the
ability to make it even public. And so this has
been a way for companies to push you and rights
violations violating which.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Are legal, you know, out of the justice system.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
And there's a million reasons why that's wrong and why
the system is rigged against you from the beginning. So
educating people on what they're signing.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Is just crucial.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
So those you know two elements are and then I
would just say the third thing, other than my huge
legislative work, is mobilizing especially the younger generation to understand
what these things are because we all know gen Z
cares more about social impact and social issues than other generations,
both men and women, by the way, and they want
(08:17):
to come together to find solutions for these kinds of things.
And they also want transparency at work. And if you
tell them that the company, if they have a choice
between company A and Company B, and one's going to
silence them forever if anything happens to them, and the
other isn't. I can guarantee you gen Z's picking the latter.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
And so.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
We're making great strides in trying to mobilize students, trying
to educate them before they get into the real world,
so that they start asking questions to say, why am
I signing this? And do I need to have these
clauses in these contracts so that we can hopefully normalize
getting rid of them, kind of like paternity leave. Like
(09:00):
fifteen years ago that was taboo, right, right said it,
but it was Now more and more men are taking
paternity lead and they're normalizing it. Right, That's what we're
hoping to do with four star bitration and NDAs.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
It's interesting that you talk about how pervasive it is now.
I mean, I remember with my first job, you know,
I signed an NDA and I just assumed it was
to not talk about the secret sauce that the firm
was using. But then it came to be that, you know,
as not to date myself. But as message forwards became
more popular and people were talking about maybe their bad
experiences working there, and suddenly, you know, legal would send
(09:35):
a memos and remember, you signed this document that says
you can't say anything, you know, things that you were
just kind of the normal griping, let alone some of
the horrible things that may go on in certain workplaces.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
So it's so important to change laws, which is the
fourth trunch of work we do, because that actually forces
people to change their behavior. And you know, I often
say this statement, which is one of the more profound
things that I've come up with over the last nine years,
which is, you know, I passed to bipartisan laws in
(10:09):
twenty twenty two, in the most hyper political time of
our generation. That was easier than changing culture. Changing culture
in America to stop treating people who have the courage
to come forward about bad behavior at work as high
as changing that is more difficult than passing laws in
(10:32):
this era of politics like we've never seen before. Yeah,
so you know, we can get to why, what the
reasons are for that, other than I would just from
high level, it's because we instill in our young people
at a very early age values and morals and what
we think about these types of things, and so that's
(10:54):
very ingrained in people, and then it's very hard for
companies to their behavior as well, because this system has
been working for them, or so they thought, but now
times are changing. And so I often say to them,
you know, the train has left the station. Join my
join me. I'll help you join me, and I'll help
(11:14):
you become more transparent, because you're not going to be
able to attract employees anymore. The more we go on
with this movement and this work and changing laws, you're
going to be behind. And so this is the message
that I try. Might be scary at first, to become
more transparent. I get it, I'm not naive, but you're
better join now because you want to retain those kind
(11:37):
of people and they have a choice of where they
want to work these days. So these kinds of things
are very very important in cultural life of companies.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah, I think that gets into my next question. You know,
certainly at Bloomberg we can appreciate, you know, you guys
using a lot of data in this, but you know
a lot of Bloomberg listeners are investors. As an investor,
I care about profitability, I care about competitive positioning, I
care about interest rates. Why should an investor care about
our company's arbitration and NBA policies.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Because all this stuff is being shoved into secrecy, and
I'm here to tell you it's gonna it's gonna get
out anyway it is. Ye And look at let's just
use Fox as an example, and I you know, I
can't go into great detail. Ironically, I don't own my
own truth. Yea, that I have a massive nda, okay,
And I may never own my own truth, which actually
(12:30):
makes my whole movement very ironic because I fight every
day to make sure other people own their own truths.
But I made there's been a movie made about me
in a mini series, and I could have nothing to
do with it. I can't even tell you if.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
It was accurate or not.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
I don't own my own story, which is crazy. But
I work every day to make sure that everyone else does.
So why should an investor care? So if we just
look at Fox News, look at how all that came
to light, and the world discuss that millions and millions
of dollars had been paid out to people, not just
(13:05):
from Roger Hills, but from other high profile people at Fox.
And as an investor, that's a huge hit to the
bottom line.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
You should know. You should know about these payouts.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
But companies have a way hypothetically, I'm not talking about
Fox anymore, companies have a way to hide them, you know,
in their accounting and as a boardman, as an investor,
you your fuduciary responsibility is to know about that. Number one,
it shouldn't be hidden from you. Also, you know, when
(13:38):
a high profile person a company has something come out
about them, that can often lead to a stock drop,
It can lead to other people becoming involved in it
and having to leave the company. I mean, there there
are a million reasons why board members and investors should
want to have the company lead a culture of more
(13:59):
transparency so that things are not hidden, and then you
suddenly have this bombshell that comes out. The last thing
I'd say is that right now, we do everything back
ass works in companies. We spend millions of dollars in
insurance policies to try to figure out how to protect
people from these kinds of claims.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Right what we should be doing.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Is as companies, we should be investing that money in
becoming more transparent because you know, if you think about it,
if you're an investor, or, you're on board, or you're
the CEO, you can change the culture you can. You
can come into the company and you can say we're
not going to silence our people anymore. We believe that's wrong.
(14:44):
We're going to take the hits that come with that.
But if we change the culture from the top and
say we're going to actually honor people who come forward
and tell us about bad actors, and then instead of
paying millions for insurance policies to protect those bad actors
and make sure it's all secret so they get to
stay on the job, we're going to actually push out
(15:05):
the bad actors and we're going to keep the person
who had the courage to come forward, because one thing
I'm going to tell you is that person more than
likely is a woman or a person of color. And
those are the exact people that you want to retain
if nothing else to increase your bottom Every study has
shown Yeah, so you're pushing out the exact people that
(15:29):
you want through these silencing mechanisms. And if you come
in and say you're going to change the culture from
the top down, that has a massive impact on the
kind of people you employ, on the kind of behaviors
you have at work, on the kind of policies you have,
and the.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Retention of good people.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
So that's my message to investors, to board members, to CEOs,
Let's change the culture because we can do this. It's
not that hard.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Yeah, And I would argue that's not just the payouts,
but it's kind of the process. You know, what are
you doing in place? You know, if I'm investing in
a widget company and you know every month ten percent
of the widgets are defective, I'd want to know, well,
what's going on with your manufacturing, what's going on with
your process that you know it's leading to so many issues.
So I think transparency certainly helps with that as well.
(16:18):
So your work on this issue actually first came to
my attention in twenty twenty one. I do a lot
of research on shareholder proposals, and that year you back
to shareholder proposal at Goldman Sachs asking the bank to
prepare and I'm going to quote here a public report
on the impact of the use of mandatory arbitration on
Golden Sacks employees and workplace culture. Now, the proposal actually
(16:40):
came up short by the narrowest of margins, I think,
probably the narrowest I've seen of a proposal that didn't pass,
And it was so close that Goldman actually agreed to
do it. Can you first of all talk about how
you got involved in that, how you were able to
rally that much support, and then ultimately, you know, what
are your thoughts about goldman subsequent actions.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah, so that was better during COVID and so I
am a shareholder of Goldman, so I could have gone
to the annual meeting in person, but it was it
was online and you can you can you can you know,
ask them or appeal to to be able to ask
questions and and so they did allow me to ask
a questions. Now it wasn't just me. There were a
(17:18):
lot of other organizations that were working behind the scenes
to try and get the question to the table, which
was what you just said, you know, why do you
use forced arbitration for your employees? And you know, would
you consider providing us a report about the impact of that?
And so I did get to ask my question. It
was very interesting because there there was a two minute
(17:41):
response to my question that was obviously pre pre prepared,
and it was all about how great forced arbitration is
for their employees. Now, keep in mind that as an organization,
we were speaking to people who worked at Goldman's acts
at the time, who had strinth stories about what was
going on, and so it was very disappointing actually to
(18:03):
hear that the board voted unanimously to not do anything
about this. But because the vote and it actually in
my book, we actually did get over the threshold and
fifty percent on that vote, I think that was a
surprise to Goldman and to other people. And you know
better than I do that with the shareholder proposals, even
(18:25):
if you're over fifty percent, the company doesn't have to
do anything right. But in this case, Goldman did decide
from public pressure. There were journalists covering the story, and
so they decided, i think, under public pressure to put
together a report. They released it right before Christmas that year,
and you know, they basically said that I think they
(18:46):
were going to look into it and change some policies.
You know, not much happened there, which brings me full
circle to why changing laws has much more impact than
shareholder proposals, even because the company doesn't have to do
the shareholders right. I mean, it never becomes very public
and there's a lot of pressure. In my line of work,
(19:07):
you can get a lot more done if you try
to pass laws.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
So speaking of laws, so that the two laws you
passed for our listeners are the Ending Forced Arbitration of
Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act and the Speak Out Act.
Can you talk about those?
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yeah, we should come up with a better name for
the first one. That's a mouthful, but we referred to
it as e FAA now and that was signed by
the President in March of twenty twenty two. This was
a five or six year journey for me. I started
working on this soon after my story and when I
again found out that this was an epidemic of silencing people,
(19:43):
and I started walking the halls of Congress and working
with a lot of organizations that had been fighting forced
arbortration for a long time. It was sort of like
this perfect storm because they had all the knowledge base
and I had the sort of celebrity story of what
had happened to me because I had a forced arbitration.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Law in my last contract at Box. That's how I.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Also became interested in it. It was a dark day
for me when my lawyers told me that I had
no case and I said, what are you talking about?
They said, you don't have a case, you have a
forced arbitration clause. I said, what's that? And I'm a
highly educated woman. I mean I went to Stamford and Oxford,
and I didn't understand.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
What it was.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
And they said, that means you can't make your case
public and we can't go to court, and nobody's ever
going to know whatever happened to you. Well, that's when
they came up with a strategy to sue Roger Hills. Personally,
we were trying to circumvent the forest arbitration clause, which
is the only reason that my case became public, and
it's arguably the only reason we're.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
In this movement.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
So, okay, I brought sort of this notoriety to forced arbitration,
and like I said, it was like a perfect storm
of coming together with these groups that had all the
knowledge base, and so we started working together, and you know,
slowly but surely, I knew I had to get Republicans
to pass the filibuster in the Senate. Democrats tend to
(21:04):
vote yes on all of these issues, so I really
had to get ten Republicans and it took me five years.
It took me five years. I strategically went after Republicans
who were retiring Republicans who have been more centrists Republicans
that I had maybe a closer relationship too, But it
(21:26):
took it took a long time, and when we finally
got there, you know, you have to you sort of
have to reassure that the Senate majority leader that you
have a bipartisan vote. And so at that point, you know,
we were able to move it forward to try and
bring it to the floor, and we were doing it
in the House at the same time, which you know,
(21:47):
adds heft to a bill because look, if you're getting
bipartisan support in both chambers, the likelihood of it becoming
law is much higher. And so, actually the vote happened
in the House first, and it was overwhelming. I mean,
we had over one hundred and twenty Republicans voting on
this yes. And then a few days later unanimously voted
(22:08):
yes in the Senate. And you know, this was just.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
A huge moment for me personally.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Because it just was so emotional because I had changed
something that had affected so many people and it was
going to give justice to so many people in the future.
And you know, it's being called the biggest labor law
change in the last one hundred years. Yeah, so what
this means is if you have a forced arbitration clause,
(22:36):
and likely you do in your workplace contract or even
your handbook, or you've clicked on an email accepting it,
you no longer have to go to the secret chamber
of forced arbitration for any sexual misconduct plane at work,
including contractors, gig workers, interns. So this is revolutionary. I
(22:57):
mean we're hearing from people now. The laws only in
an effect for three years. I can't we're trying to
do research now on how many people we've helped, but
it's a lot. On our website, you can go and
listen to our love Justice campaign where you see videos
of people who are so faint because they are able
(23:17):
now to get justice and go to court instead of
being thrown into secret arbitration. So this is having massive impact.
And then a short eight months later we were able
to pass the Speakout Act, which gets rid of predisputed
NDAs for sexualist conduct also.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
In the workplace.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
And the only reason that was able to happen so
quickly is because we had already built this bipartisan coalition
and we were able to go back to them again
and say, look, NDAs are also bad, and so you
know we were able to pass that. We do have
a third bill which goes back to the arbitration bill,
and it would add in age discrimination so that you
(23:55):
wouldn't be forced into age discrimination, which by the way,
is anyone over forty, which is of us. And that
would mean that you could also seek justice for that.
That was the next thing we could get the Republicans
to get on board with. But as an organization, we
believe in getting rid of NBA's and forced arbitration for
every protected class, so that would include race, gender, disability,
(24:18):
LGBTQ plus etc.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Yeah, I mean, I guess I always just assume that,
you know, oh, these things can't apply if there's something
illegal going on. But I was wrong.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Yeah. Never.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
The intent of forced arbitration, by the way, I mean
for starbitration we all know, is to unclog the court systems.
It was like if you had a small business dispute
over three hundred blucks, you know, instead of going in
front of a judge, everyone would probably agree, yeah, just
go to arbitration. Right. It was never supposed to adjudicate
human rights viirations, but companies started realizing that it was
a secret process and they were like Wow, maybe we
(24:52):
could throw these kinds of cases into secrecy, and once
that started, it just loaded and nobody was shining a
light on it, you know, because people don't understand it,
and they really don't get it until something bad happens
to them, and then it's too late.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
So you started the conversation down the political baths. I'll continued.
The new administration has really set its sight on DEI.
I saw a couple of weeks ago the FDIIC actually
had a pause it search for an anti sexual harassment
trainer because of the executive order on DEI. Now, certainly
there are elements of the culture wars involved and the
diversity and equity pieces, but setting those aside, I think
(25:31):
conclusion would be much less controversial, particularly as it revolves
around in appropriate conduct in the workplace. And is there
a risk that with the DEI rollback, we're seeing that
maybe some of the mechanisms that have been put in
place in the corporate world to curb sexual harassment could
wind up on the chopping block.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah, I mean that could be a reality. I tend
to wake up every day optimistic because I have to,
and you know, look, our issues, our issues, we don't
necessarily put into the DEI bucket because we really believe
that this is a worker's rights issue because while forced
(26:10):
arbitration and NDAs have a higher prevalence with women and
people of color in the workplace, white men are also
affected by this right. So you know, when you figure
that fifty five percent of all white men are affected
by forced arbitration and NDAs, this is really not a
DEI issue. This is a worker's right issue about transparency.
(26:35):
So you know, again, I'm not naive enough to think
that we might not face some backlash because of the
administration's attacks on DEI, But we're shouting from the mountaintops
that you know, this affects everybody. Everybody should be concerned
about this, and it's not just people who fall into
the DEI bucket.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Yeah, and I think maybe that's one of the problems.
You know, I've seen in ESG, I've seen in DEI
that there's different issues that have different impacts and they
just to get that cut little lacronym, we'll throw it together.
Whereas you know, again, inclusion is completely different and making
sure that you have a safe, collaborative work environment is
different from you know, trying to get diversity into the workplace,
(27:15):
and I do worry that some of that nuance make
it a loft. So you just launched the Love where
You Work Index. Can you talk about that and what
you're hoping to accomplish with it.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah, So this is a survey that we are sending
out to the companies in the Russell three thousand, and
it's a very simple survey. It's ten questions. It basically
gets to the heart of the matter. Do you use
for st arbitration? And do you use NDAs for things
greater than proprietary information? And we are hoping to get
the responses and build an index from those responses for
(27:51):
a couple of reasons. Number one, so that we can
provide a resource for the millions of American workers to
be able to come to our our website at Liftourvoices
dot org and see which companies use these mechanisms. It's
a huge question that we get all the time. Rob
you know, how do I know if my company's safety
And so that's the main reason we were doing it.
(28:13):
The other is because we're trying to find out exactly
how many companies out there are doing this. We know
it's a lot, but we want to also honor the
companies that are not doing this, So eventually we would
build out a scoring system as well, and companies who
are not using these mechanisms would get an A from us,
and that would be a big pr boon for them.
(28:34):
So we're especially hoping that those companies respond to our survey.
The third big reason is because we're using it as
a soft nudged companies who are currently not doing the
right thing to do the right thing, because if they
need a score from us, that's not a good one.
You know, it will be a soft nudge in the
direction of hey, you know, join with us will help you.
(28:58):
And it's not like we're going to go out and
put the blow up rat, you know, out in front
of their their offices like they do in New York
City to try and mention, you know, we're doing this
in a very genteel way, but it is a soft
nudge to have companies do self examination and introspection about
changing their policies. The other thing I would mention about
(29:18):
the Love Where You Work Index Rob is that nobody
else is doing this. Nobody else has ever surveyed companies
on their use of silencing mechanisms. And we see these
kind of surveys out there all over the place. Best
place is to work, you know, the Deloitte study about
women at work, the McKinsey study. Nobody is asking our questions,
(29:39):
no one. Part of the reason is because they don't
want to ruffle companies feathers. And so that's why at
Lift our Voices we decided to do it ourselves.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
And what's the responsement from companies or is it still
too early.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
That so we're still out in the field with it
right now. Again, we're not naive to think that a
ton of companies are going to feel this out in
the first year, especially if they're not doing the right thing.
But we had to start somewhere. And you know, we,
as I said, are the only organization doing this work
in the country, and so you know, we're very proud
(30:13):
of the fact that we were able to launch this.
I will mention that Melinda Gates, her foundation Pivotal Ventures,
is the one that's funding this for us, and so
you know, this is something that is important to them,
and it's important to us, and it's important.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
To everything fantastic. Now, looking forward, where does Lift our
Voices go from here? What's the next for you.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
As I know, you know, when we passed those two laws,
a lot of people thought our work was done because
they were like, hey, you solved it for sexual mystic
and I was like, yeah, if look at were that
easy because we work for all these other protected classes
as well. You know, It's it's kind of like if
you envision yourself at work in a cubicle and you're
facing sexual misconducts, so you don't have to be forced
(30:56):
into silence anymore with or starbutation or NBA's right, but
the person sitting in the cubicle next to you is
facing gender or race discrimination and they find out, oh, wow,
you don't have to be forced into silence, but I do. Right.
That's what we're hoping is going to start happening to
help propel the rest of our work forward. So, as
(31:18):
I mentioned, we have an age discrimination for st arbitration
bill in the pipeline, and so we're hoping that that
will eventually move into introducing bills for tender discrimination and
forest arbitration and race discrimination and disability, et cetera. We
also work at the state level, and so so far
three states have banned NDAs for all toxic workplace issues.
(31:42):
So if you live in New Jersey, California, or Washington State,
you cannot be forced to sign an NDA at work
for anything bad that happens to you. Atlift our voices.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
We have also.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Introduced similar legislation in New York at Connecticut. So imagine
if that passes in New York, for example, I mean
the biggest employee base, the biggest employer base, it would
be a massive game changer. And one thing I'll add
is that sometimes the state law work can be more
profound than even the federal law work. Because after those
(32:14):
state bans happened with NDAs, companies that were based in
Washington and California, especially like Microsoft. For example, Microsoft realized
that they were going to have.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
A two tiered system for their employees.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
They're gonna have three states where you couldn't have NDAs,
and then they were going to have the rest of
the states where you could. But then what if their
workers traveled I'm business, right, and what if something happened there?
And by the way, is it fair to have some
of your employees silenced and some of them not. So
Microsoft decided to get rid of NDA's globally. Now lift
their voices. That's what we're hoping is going.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
To happen with every company.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
So the more states that we can get bills that
are passed for these NDA bans, the more impact we
can have. And it does have this dominant affect your companies.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Right, because I'm sure they don't want to have this
kind of balconized HR manual exactly.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
But one thing I'll just say for investors, board members,
employees to be aware of is that even though I've
been instrumental in passing these two federal laws and some
of these state laws, the companies don't have to tell
you about them, and they don't have to rewrite their contracts,
so they can still write in there a forced arbitration
(33:30):
claus and in many cases they're not going to parse
out sexual misconduct, right, They're not going to say, hey,
we're gonna we're gonna make you go to forest arbitration
for all these other things, but not sexual miscondent.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
So you have to know you.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Don't have to the same thing with NDAs, which brings
me full circle to why education is so important, right,
you know, so educating people and getting board members and
investors to care about this stuff is crucial and start
asking questions because that's how we eventually get.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
To the to the full transparency.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Amazing, thank you so much, or just about out the time,
but I did. I guess I didn't realize with the
movies that you weren't allowed to consult. But are you
at least allowed to say who who you liked better playing.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
You as it?
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Naomi Wats or Nicole kid Me?
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Even if I could, I wouldn't because I thought they
were you know, they're both fabulous actors and actresses, I
should say, And I would just say that, although I
can't comment on it, that it was incredibly flattering and
humbling to me that actresses of such high caliber would
want to take on these roles because they really brought,
(34:41):
you know, so much information forward about why these issues are.
And I actually have had a chance to become friendly
with Naomi Watts and and and you know, she has
been so kind to me and saying that, you know,
she could have never had the same bravery that I had,
even though she played played me as as an actress.
And I just think that them being able to play
(35:06):
these roles has really helped to move the needle.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
So I'll be forever grateful for that.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Yeah, and I will say for our listeners who haven't,
I would recommend both projects. It was bombshell and then
The Loudest Voice, The Loudest Voice. That's right, both great projects.
All right, well, thank you very much for your time today, correction,
and it was great hearing about these issues and the
important work you're doing.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Thank you so much for having me. And people can
get more information at Liftourvoices dot org.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
Perfect and listeners can also find more information on the
issues we're talking about on the Bloomberg terminal at BI
space ESG go. If you have an ESG quandary you
would like to ask bi's expert analysts or get more
info about our research, send us an email at ESG
Currents at Bloomberg dot net. And if you liked this episode,
please subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform,
Host
Eric Kane
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