Update 4:45 p.m. Thursday, April 25: Retired Cincinnati news anchor Clyde Gray agrees with eliminating the “non-compete” clause in contracts which delayed his move from WLWT-TV to WCPO-TV in 1990, and prevented him from working at WXIX-TV after leaving Channel 9 in 2014.
“A free market ought to be actually and equally free,” said Gray when I asked him to comment on the Federal Trade Commission’s vote Tuesday to ban non-compete clauses that prevent or delay workers wanting to join a competitor’s company.
“Yes, I did have to sit out between WLWT and WCPO (in 1990). I also missed an opportunity to work at another station in town (in 2015) because of a non-compete sometime after I left WCPO (in 2014). I think it’s wonderful that the people constantly whining about loosening restrictions on the marketplace so they can make money get to take a dose of that same free market medicine,” Gray said.
Gray did two stints at WLWT-TV (1979-83; 1985-90) before jumping to Channel 9. Then he did two stretches at WCPO-TV – mostly as main anchor before retiring in the middle of his contract (1990-2014) – and as the daytime Cincy Lifestyles co-host (2018-22).
While retired in 2015, Gray auditioned to co-anchor WXIX-TV’s weeknight newscasts with Tricia Macke before Rob Williams was promoted to nights. Gray told me in 2018 that he couldn't work for Fox 19 because of "a contractual obligation" to Channel 9. After "multiple conversations" with WCPO-TV, he returned to Channel 9 on May 7, 2018, for the Cincy Lifestyles premiere with Mona Morrow.
Original post 1:42 p.m. Wednesday, April 24: Longtime Cincinnati TV personality Julie O’Neill welcomed the Federal Trade Commission’s 3-2 vote Tuesday to ban “non-compete” clauses for workers at for-profit companies.
A standard non-compete in her WCPO-TV contract kept O’Neill from appearing on another station for one year after Channel 9 didn’t renew her contract after 27 years at the end of 2023.
“The deck has been stacked against the worker for a long time. We who have mortgages to pay and children to take care of have been at the mercy of the corporate machine, and in some cases, corporations behave like bullies,” says O’Neill, who premiered her weekday "NOW in the Nati" on WXIX-TV Jan. 22 — or 22 days after her one-year non-compete ended.
“No one wants to lose everything they've worked for, so they have to sign the non-competes and nondisclosures. The playing field needs some leveling to give the individual worker a chance,” O’Neill says.
O’Neill is one of many Cincinnati TV faces — including anchors Clyde Gray and Sheila Gray and reporter Joe Webb — who could not immediately appear on a competing station due to that contract clause. Both Webb and O’Neill were able to work in their new station off the airwaves, and Sheila Gray worked for WKRC-TV's sister stations in Dayton for a while before appearing on the airwaves.
The FTC estimates about 30 million people — or 1 in 5 American workers, from minimum wage earners to chief executives — are bound by non-competes, according to NPR. The FTC says the policy change could lead to increased wages totaling nearly $300 billion per year by encouraging people to swap jobs freely.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it would sue the FTC to block the rule as early as this week, CNN said.
President Joe Biden soon after the announcement said “the FTC is cracking down on ‘non-compete agreements,’ contracts that employers use to prevent their workers from changing jobs even if that job will pay a few dollars more, or provide better working conditions. Workers ought to have the right to choose who they want to work for,” according to CNN.
The new rule allows “existing non-competes that companies have given their senior executives, on the grounds that these agreements are more likely to have been negotiated,” NPR says. It will become effective 120 days after the rule’s publication in the Federal Register, CNN said.
According to published reports, the FTC ban impacts all kinds of workers, from doctors and top executives at technology and financial companies, to security guards and sandwich-shop employees. Non-competes are “robbing people of their economic liberty," FTC chair Chair Lina Khan said Tuesday.
O’Neill detailed her dismissal from WCPO-TV in a tell-all book released last June, "BOLD: The Secret to My BIG WINS To Help YOU CRASH Through Your Comfort Zone." O’Neill said she rejected Scripps' $50,000 severance offer because the company insisted she sign a non-disclosure agreement prohibiting her from talking about her departure from the company.
Not taking the severance "in favor of maintaining my right to free speech may not be the right one for everyone, but it was the right one for me. After much prayer and contemplation, I came to the realization that I just didn’t have it in me to give a company control over what I can and cannot say," she wrote in the book.
When we spoke about her book last June, O’Neill told me that her old WCPO-TV contract prohibited her from working for a competing Cincinnati TV station for one year. “Not every state allows non-competes, but Ohio does. And that's on my list. I'd like to get that changed," she said.
On June 29 she sued WCPO-TV alleging equal pay violations, age discrimination, sex discrimination, and retaliation. The case is pending in U.S. District Court.
