Non-compete clauses targeted

Television reporter Adam Bagni left Providence’s WJAR-TV for a Boston station last year before the latest round of politically tinged promotional segments from owner Sinclair Broadcasting put local anchors under scrutiny.

Now working for a television station in Arizona, Bagni said knowing what he does about Sinclair’s employment contracts, he doesn’t blame WJAR anchors Frank Coletta, Alison Bologna, Patrice Wood or Dan Jaehnig for reading segments about “false news” that critics have called attacks on journalism.

“I wouldn’t read what Frank and Alison did, but I don’t blame them, because their jobs were on the line,” Bagni said. “There are so many journalists there that are so dedicated, but they are stuck. They basically put you in a box so you don’t have a choice.”

Bagni’s contract had Sinclair’s standard provisions, including a penalty for leaving early — 40 percent of annual salary multiplied by length remaining — and a non-compete agreement.

Tough contract language in television contracts is not unique to Sinclair, but scrutiny of that company’s tactics have added impetus behind a push to ban at least one of the tools used to give stations leverage over their employees: non-compete clauses.

Used in a number of industries, non-compete clauses prevent employees from taking a job with a competing company for a set period of time, often one year, after they end their employment, even if it was the station that decided to part ways.

In local television news, this typically means that journalists who work for one of the three main Providence stations have to leave the state if they decide to change jobs, a situation the union that represents television news employees in New England calls unfair.

A pair of union-backed General Assembly bills sponsored by Pawtucket Democrats, Sen. Donna Nesselbush and Rep. Jean Philippe Barros, would make them illegal in all broadcast contracts.

“They can say ‘we are not going to renew your contract’ and now that employee is stuck,” said Fletcher Fischer, business manager of the IBEW Local 1228 at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the bill. “They cannot work in this market. They have to move, sell their house and uproot their family.”

Fischer said the bill was similar to legislation passed in Massachusetts two years ago. Around 10 states have some form of protection for broadcast employees from non-compete clauses, including Utah, which passed one earlier this month.

In prior years, former Republican state Rep. Daniel Reilly had introduced bills to ban non-competes across all industries, but they never passed.

Non-compete agreements are difficult to enforce in Rhode Island, but just the threat of court action is often enough to prevent employees from trying to join another station.

Former WJAR investigative reporter Jim Taricani called non-competes unfair in written testimony supporting the bill.

“Prohibiting an employee from finding work to support themselves and their families is an outrageous condition of employment,” Taricani wrote. “Unlike non-compete clauses used for employees who work for companies where they may have knowledge of company ‘secrets’ or ‘confidential product research,’ ‘on-air’ talent in broadcasting have no such knowledge of any confidential information.”

Former WLNE-TV and WPRI-TV meteorologist Steve Cascione, who now works for the R.I. Department of Transportation, wrote that non-competes are a “bitter pill” that “prevents broadcasters from changing jobs and many times intimidates us to stay at jobs we don’t like.”

No one representing Rhode Island’s local television stations testified at the hearing.

WJAR general manager Vic Vetters wrote in an email that the station had no comment on the non-compete issue.

Lori Needham, president of the Rhode Island Broadcasters Association, wrote in an email that the group had not yet asked its members about the bills.

Sen. Harold Metts told fellow lawmakers that Sinclair’s “false news” promos, which echo attacks from President Donald Trump on the press, had prompted him to switch stations.

Bagni was able to move to a Boston station before his contract ended because of a special clause in his contract. Even then, he said, Sinclair fought him all the way, made him stay on for 45 days, and almost scuttled his new job.

He said that, in his six years at WJAR, Sinclair never, as far as he could tell, interfered in how local stories were covered.

Staff at the station tried to get through the “must-run” segments, such as Terrorism Alert Desk and commentary pieces, he said, by running them before dawn or reading them very quickly.

“We ask people every day to talk to us in their toughest moments, and they do,” Bagni said. “Sinclair is trying to take advantage of this trust.”