Gag Orders and NDAs Are More Common at UK Arts Organizations Than You Think, According to a Troubling New Survey

Arts
organizations in the UK are facing growing pressure over their use
of confidentiality agreements to cover up allegations ranging from
sexual harassment to bullying and financial mismanagement. Victims
and whistleblowers who were among the respondents to a new survey
suggest that the use of non-disclosure agreements, or NDAs, is far
more widespread than previously thought. 

One in
six respondents to the anonymous survey conducted by the
organization Arts Professionals said they had been offered a
financial settlement (or “gagging order”) in return for their
silence. The authors of the report concluded that NDAs are being
used to avoid negative publicity and control dissenting voices.
(The survey, conducted online, was taken by 500 participants.
Anyone working in the UK arts industry could participate; the
survey organizers acknowledge that this makes for a self-selecting
sample group.)

This
comes after the UK government, under then prime minister Theresa
May, had expressed concern that NDAs were being used unethically by some
employers and their lawyers to silence victims of sexual
harassment. Boris Johnson’s government has committed to passing
new legislation that would
prohibit NDAs being used to try and thwart individuals from
disclosing information to the police about alleged criminal
offences.

NDAs
in the art world are being used to cover a wide range of issues.
One person who responded to the survey said that some leading
organizations, which receive public funding via Arts Council
England (ACE), include confidentiality clauses in contracts issued
to artists, a situation they described as “extraordinary.” 
ACE did not immediately respond to a request for
comment. 

There
is some evidence that museums and art galleries that have asked
employees to sign NDAs during disputes or layoffs in the past are
scaling back their use. “We were astounded when a major museum
removed a confidentiality clause,” says Clara Pallard, the
president of the PSC trade union’s culture group. The case involved
a transgender employee who claimed that they had been assaulted in
the workplace. She wonders whether the prolific use of NDAs by the
late billionaire Jeffrey Epstein and “other monsters”  has
made institutions wary of trying to silence employees in sexual
harassment cases. Disgraced film producer and now convicted rapist
Harvey Weinstein used NDAs for years to silence his
victims. 

Pallard points out that such cases are rarely
straightforward. Just as employees might not be confident of
winning their case in an employment tribunal, an employer also
might prefer to reach a settlement when the evidence may be one
person’s word against another’s. Sometimes the victim feels it is
in their best interest to reach a confidential settlement. In other
instances, they might instead push for legal accountability. One
survey respondent told of how they decided against signing an NDA
on offer. “I didn’t accept the settlement agreement they offered
and had my three days in court instead… which I won,” they
wrote. 

Liz Hill, the director of Arts
Professionals, says that she
feels most of the NDAs referred to were used “as a means of
stopping employees from spilling the beans on things that their
organizations have been up to that others—whoever those ‘others’
may be— wouldn’t approve of, or worse still, things that were
unlawful.” 

The post Gag Orders and NDAs Are More Common at UK Arts
Organizations Than You Think, According to a Troubling New
Survey appeared first on artnet News.