She told UK podcast<\/a> The News Agents: “I worried that the company that believes in freedom of speech might try and stop it.”<\/p>\nDuring a debate on the Employment Rights Bill last week in the British Parliament, Louise Haigh claimed Wynn-Williams was “on the verge of bankruptcy”.<\/p>\n
She used the case as an example of why she believed the UK needed the proposed legislation, saying “Meta has served a gagging order on Sarah and is attempting to fine her US$50,000 (NZ$85,000) for every breach of that order.”<\/p>\n
Haigh said Meta was seeking to “silence and punish” Wynn-Williams for speaking out against it.<\/p>\n
The Guardian reported that Meta said Wynn-Williams had not been forced to make any payments under the agreement.<\/p>\n
It also said the company declined to comment on Haigh’s speech.<\/p>\n
RNZ has approached Meta for comment.<\/p>\n
In March, Meta provided a statement to RNZ in which it called the book “a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives”.<\/p>\n
It said Wynn-Williams ceased working at the company eight years ago, and an investigation at the time found she had made “misleading and unfounded allegations of harassment”.<\/p>\n
Haigh was speaking to clause 22 of the Bill when she made the comments.<\/p>\n
She said the clause detailed new protections for whistleblowers, including banning NDAs that related to harassment or discrimination of victims.<\/p>\n
“The widespread misuse of non-disclosure agreements has sustained an environment where abuse and discrimination have been covered up, where silence has been bought, and where perpetrators were protected while victims were pushed aside,” Haigh said.<\/p>\n
“It has perpetuated and protected toxic workplace cultures and has allowed systemic and institutional abuse to be ignored.”<\/p>\n
The Bill was in its final stages, having already passed the third reading in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords.<\/p>\n
It was now being sent back to the House of Lords for consideration of the House of Commons amendments.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sarah Wynn-Williams at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, DC in April. Photo: Win McNamee \/ Getty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-36309","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-podcasts","13":"tag-public-radio","14":"tag-radio-new-zealand","15":"tag-rnz","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}