Huawei Affiliate’s Severance Contract Illegal, NLRB Judge Rules

A telecommunications technology company included illegal confidentiality provisions in a severance agreement, a National Labor Relations Board judge ruled.

Futurewei Technologies Inc., a U.S.-based affiliate of the blacklisted Chinese firm Huawei Technologies Co., required former employees to broadly waive their rights to discuss the severance package in return for financial considerations, Administrative Law Judge Robert Ringler held in his Thursday ruling.

“The waiver is unlimited in scope and lacks any effort to ‘narrowly tailor’ its breadth to preserve ongoing protected discussions about the Severance Agreement’s terms with former workers, which was expressly barred under McLaren Macomb,” Ringler …