Jimmy Dore Just Another Greedy Narcissist Exploiting His Workers.
NDA's, Independent Contractors and Right-Wing Talking Points About CA-22
Yesterday, Walker Bergman on his Substack Important Context released an article entitled “Jimmy Dore's 'Very Pro-Employer' Work Contracts”, the article details just how narcissist Jimmy Dore truly is for a Pot-Smoking jaggoff in his garage. It really shouldn’t come as a surprise that basically Jimmy Dore is more interested in protecting his perfectly manicured YouTube persona than actually doing hard hitting news. Let’s remember the entire Jimmy Dore show is in fact an adaptation of a comedy routine he developed in 2005 called “Citizen Jimmy”.
I think it is far to say that “Citizen Jimmy” was a conscious effort by Dore to capitalize on the changing nature of comedy in America. With the advent of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” (1996) political comedy that blurred the line between news and satire was very much the vogue product. And more importantly Jon Stewart in fact blurred the lines further by using his satire to produce real journalistic content. In 2021 the LA Times wrote an article What Made the 'Daily Show' the influentlal Late-Night Comedy of the Last 25 Years in which they tell the importance of the show after the post-9/11 and Hanging chads controversy of the millennium occurred. And the Bush era’s war on terror turbo-charged the show’s appeal with disaffected teenagers and college students that otherwise wouldn’t listen to a news program. It is from this place that Dore created the “Citizen Jimmy” routine—and it became a hit. In 2008 Comedy Central turned “Citizen Jimmy” from a stage show into a 1-hour TV special that reached millions of rabid fans that wanted comedy with a take no-prisoner political edge to it. Dore described “Citizen Jimmy” as “sticking it to the man kind of comedy” in punchline magazine [Dore Wages War On Stupidity]. But most importantly Jimmy Dore in 2008 didn’t want his politics to be preachy in nature in fact here is another quote from Dore on his goals as with the “Citizen Jimmy” era routine:
I like to talk about important, serious things but in a real silly way. I like to be upbeat about it. The funny comes from my bones and my persona, rather than the words. It’s kind of like Jerry Lewis doing Lenny Bruce. You know, Lenny Bruce was a very serious guy. I don’t want to get caught up in that. I don’t want to get too serious on a comedy stage. It just makes me feel more comfortable— the older I get, the sillier I want to be. If I can talk about serious stuff in a funny way, that’s when I feel like I’m clicking, like I’m hitting on all cylinders. That keeps me away from being preachy. I’m not preachy; I’m not in your face. It seems like every comic wants to be in your face. I’m more silly. [Punchline, 2008]
The “Citizen Jimmy” routine was followed up with being part of the pot-friendly documentary “Super High-Me” and the later Dore released his first book Your Country Just Isn’t That Into You (2014) published by Running Press Adults. Now, Running Press Adults’ catalog is predominately filled with soft titles concerning comedic stories to self-help. So, clearly this first book of Dore’s was marketed less as a gripping read of political insight and more as a humorous title for the coffee table. But, something must have changed?
In 2009 Dore started “the Jimmy Dore Show” that first aired as a radio show on Los Angeles’ KPFK 90.7 and nationally on Pacifica Radio Network which is known for its politically orientated radio shows like its Flag Ship “Democracy Now!”. While the show was picked up by the Young Turks for distribution on Youtube. During this period Dore was a frequent guest on the Current TV production of “The Young Turks”. During this period Jimmy Dore’s outward persona began to shift—especially when Dore starts his show the “Aggressive Progressive” in 2017 on the TYT network. It seems that Dore starts to take his online persona to the next level.His comedy is no longer the Jerry Lewis lovable goof ball but a harder edged more aggressive persona.
And this is where Walker Bergman’s work becomes so interesting to me. It is clear that Jimmy Dore has navigated the currents of the anti-establishment sentiments of the early 2000’s to the present very well. But along the way it is also clear that Dore isn’t an authentic actor. His positions in a 2-3 year period on vaccines, masks, and more have shifted radically from the left to the right and often comically that one cannot help but see that Dore is playing the game. Dore at this point is about creating a cult of personality around his media project. And let’s face It—for Dore his online persona is his career. Without it Dore would disappear into an abyss of obscurity. So, it is with little surprise that Dore forces his employees to sign non-disclosure agreements. What is less clear to me is exactly how many people have to sign these agreements; as of 2020 4 Dore Productions included only 3 jobs to the Paycheck Protection Program for a grand total $34,262 forgiven funds (Propublica). It’s hard to believe that with a mere three employees and the fact he literally only repeats news from other sources that he needs a NDA to maintain trade secrets.
It’s rather clear from the start that really what Jimmy Dore is protecting is in fact the “Jimmy Dore” persona that is a registered trade marked commodity found daily on your YouTube and Rumble streaming services. As you can see in the below attached image :
(Walker Bergman )
The arbitration clause in the NDA lists the following reasons for one to go arbitration: “Claims For Wages and other compensation, claims for breach of contract (express or implied), claims for violation of public policy, wrongful termination, and wrongful demotion; claims for fraud, misrepresentation, emotional distress, and other torts; claims for unlawful discrimination, harassment, and/or retaliation to the extent allowed by the law (including to but not limited to, claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, The American Disabilities At, The Age Discrimination in Employment Act, The California Fair Employment and Housing Act, and the California Labor code); and claims for violation of any other federal, state, or municipal law, statue, regulation or ordinance”— which basically translates into a clause that means your Boss dominates the legal playing field when it comes to making a complaint against himself, or his corporation in general. But further more the NDA includes this Clause:
(Walker Bergman)
So, once you’ve realized that you’ve literally signed yourself into a slave contract (yes, Dr. Burgis, I would deem this a slave contract for the poor person signing away any chance of actually getting a resolution to a problem with 4 Dore Productions). The question becomes how many of Dore’s immediate, extended , or non-close relatives actually work in the 4 Dore Production Office? The PPP loan information indicated that in 2020 4 Dore Productions only had 3 employees. The critical part of this agreement is the fact that any “information concerning their business, personal life, finances, investments, performance, professional relationships, or otherwise, and all such shall be deemed to be Confidential and Proprietary Information and treated as such”. Is a complete gag order on the inner workings of the “Jimmy Dore Show”.
This NDA nicely explains why when Jimmy Dore was caught misrepresenting an article about about Singapore’s response to covid by a fellow youtuber— Shaun_Vids. Now you can see why some poor unnamed and forever silent Producer of the show was blamed for Jimmy’s gaff on air. Which wasn’t a gaff , but in fact the result of some one intentionally rewriting a sentence to change the meaning of a paragraph from the original writers intent. This is where an ironclad bit of NDA comes in handy— Dore is completely shielded from whistling blowing in his own organization. In fact if any employee even tried to come out and dispute the story that Dore would later use: that a producer made a mistake and was fired for. As a wrongful termination suite one would have to first go to Arbitration as we see in the screen clip marked 9. So, this is very handy development for Dore. It allows Dore to maintain his image to the people and as we know a true narcissistic personal disorder also exhibits traits that include the inability to accept one’s own failings. I think it is rather clear that instead of taking responsibility for the incident Dore put all the fault on his producer. And thanks to the NDA that producer faced a $10,000 penalty if he or she decided to blow the whistle on 4 Dore Productions. Which probably was a price that this person felt they couldn’t afford to do.
(Walker Bergman)
Furthermore, the producer couldn’t even fight the termination process without first going to Arbitration. A process that has been notoriously bad for workers since the Arbitration industry is designed to support the employers and not employees. The process of arbitration is also costly and time consuming with no recourses for the employee, if they fail in their arbitration process; which is the most common outcome in these matters. The Settle Times wrote an excellent piece on Forced Arbitration called “Mandatory arbitration cases have soared during the pandemic”. The Settle Times reported that: “We’ve outsourced our justice system, as far as workers and consumers are concerned,” said Julia Duncan, senior director of government affairs at AAJ. “Very few people go through the forced arbitration process because it’s so rigged, and the ones that do almost never get relief.”[Settle Times] This is a system designed to benefit the the employer as Duncan points out in the Settle Times article and it is also true for Dore’s NDA.
It’s hard not to cringe a bit when you read the words “any breach or threatened breach” referring for the contractor since 4 Dore Productions. After all 4 Dore Productions doesn’t actually employee anyone who maybe direct linked to leaking confidential and property information and thus will end with a contractor being forced to pay the sum of $10,000 as damages in the advent of a breach. But, even a threatened breach, could in fact end with you the contractor paying a $10,000 bonus to good old Jimmy Dore. So, as you can see that puts a damper on even thinking about divulging anything that might occur behind the scenes at the 4 Dore Production Lot aka the garage of his home. Who’s going to say anything but good things about Dore as an ex-employee? Even if you’re harassed , humiliated, overworked, and forces to take the blame for Dore’s shoddy notion of journalism—you’re the one that will be paying $10,000 to 4 Dore Productions for breach of contract at minimum. That’s just the minimum if the claims that your breach of contract causes the loss of revenue you can just tack those amounts on to the final bill and of course the arbitration fees. So, you can see how a narcissist would love to have this type of contract because it literally protects them from ever having to admit they are wrong—the blame is always shifted to some other party that has no legal recourse to protect themselves at all.
But, the second part of this equation and is perhaps the most damning feature of this contract is that 4 Dore Productions doesn’t have any employees. Which of course is odd since they told the Small Business Administration (SBA) when applying for the Paycheck Protection Program they had employees. To be exact three of them. But, if 4 Dore Productions isn’t an employer; but, merely a company that subs out its labor to independent contractors then where did 4 Dore Production’s money go? Who are the three employees that received $33,800 in salaries (4 Dore Productions PPP). One of the big complaints about the Paycheck Protection Program has been that millions of dollars if not billions of the program designed to support workers paychecks and pay critical bills to maintain businesses during the pandemic failed to reach the proper hands.
Now, I’m not claiming that this is proof of 4 Dore Productions being involved in defrauding the government. However, there are some interesting issues with 4 Dore Productions turning its staff into Independent Contractors while also claiming employees on the payroll. The fact is that the Independent Contractors themselves would have been eligible to participate in the PPP with loans for themselves. So, it is unclear right here who 4 Dore Productions declares as employees for the $33,800 PPP Loan. Either way this topic should be looked into more carefully—which is ironically exactly why 4 Dore Production has a NDA for its contractors—but, you cannot protect yourself from defrauding the government with a NDA. But, again the NDA is designed to make it less probable that anyone working for 4 Dore Productions would even question issues like this, because they can face $10,000 penalty , legal costs, and more in arbitration.
While this certainly isn’t a good look for the accounting department at 4-Dore Productions. The final issues is how many times have we heard Dore on his show make claims about the labor practice of his former boss Cenk Uygar at The Young Turks (TYT). Dore, loves to pick away at TYT for their contentious labor union formation period. And to be honest Dore would be in the right, if it weren’t for the fact that Dore has created the perfect shield for his own labor practices: independent contractors and NDA’s.
(What would Dr. Wolff think of all this Democracy In 4DP Workplace That Is Going On???)
But there is more exploitation in the 4 Dore Production Inc. contract is present. Once workers are considered independent contractors they fail to be covered in many respects by the National Labor Relations law— like minimum wage, employer benefits, compliance fees and so on all now become the domain of the Independent contractor to pay for. One of the most ironic parts of Dore’s anti-labor stance actually comes in a segment he recently did on the Gig Economy called “Pelosi Endorses Gutting Worker Protections”. In the short clip above Jimmy Dore clearly makes the false claim that CA Prop 22 is an attempt to battle agains the exploitation of the Gig Economy. That is truly false since the proposition was sponsored by the likes of DoorDash, Lyft, Uber and Instacart (Patch CA Prop 22) to the tune of $186million dollars. So, clearly any simple research could find that Dore’s understanding of this proposition is just mistaken at best and worst purposefully misleading for his own aggrandizement in the eco-system of the alternative media Dore operates in. So, now what we know that Dore is incorrect about the reasons for the creation of Proposition 22 in the first place. The next part of his description of the bill takes on a different tone altogether.
(Embrace Your Exploitation My Fellow Workers— Dore doesn’t like it when you question Independent Contractor Status Work!)
After Dore tells his audience that CA-22 is a bill designed to help workers in the gig economy but some how DoorDash, Lyft , Uber and Instacart are exempted from it and so it only hurts small business— we find out that none of this description by Dore is in fact correct. The companies he claims are exempt actually crafted CA Prop 22 as a counter to a much stronger bill known as California Assembly Bill - 5 (AB-5) that was signed into law a year earlier by Governor Gavin Newsome. AB-5 was the first attempt to wrestle away some exploitative practices by the Gig Economy in fact Investopedia has a nice little time line article about AB-5 , AB-2257, and CA-22 (AB-5) and the fight by big tech to keep the Gig economy completely exploitive to the drivers and costumers alike. The big win in AB-5 was the three prong test for whether a worker was an employee or an independent contractor. Here are the three prongs:
The worker is free to perform services without the control or direction of the company.
The worker is performing work tasks that are outside the usual course of the company’s business activities.
The worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as that involved in the work performed. (Investopedia)
As one can see the these three prongs produced serious issues for the gig economy specifically the ride sharing and delivery segments. However, as you will see in the linked article that AB-5 already had a healthy number of exemptions and one could even apply for such an exemption. (NoLo AB-5 Exemptions) As soon as AB-5 was put into law the Assembly watered it down with AB-2257 to help clarify some of the exemptions. Still, this wasn’t good enough for the Gig Tech Businesses like DoorDash, Uber, Lyft and Instacart—so, they lobbied for Prop 22. Prop-22 took the three prongs of the AB-5 for determining employee or Independent contractor status and exempted these companies completely from it. That was the goal of Prop 22 and 58% of the voting public in California bought into the claims of the Big Tech Corporations— that really AB-5 stifled and harmed Gig workers with things like stable predictable employment schedules, minimum wages, health benefits, and protection under the corporation’s insurance. All terrible things the Big Tech Companies told voters and soon the Voters bought it and Gig Workers were once again under the heal of the Tech Corporations. This is what Dore is covering up with his incorrect facts about CA Prop 22—it’s not that some how the Big Tech got exemptions at the cost of small business owners—that was the entire point of the proposition from the beginning. CA Prop 22 was from the start a Big Tech attack on the workers to ensure that they could exploit them legally by craving out an permanent exemption to classification of this labor as Independent contract work. This is why Dore’s misrepresentation of the entire affair is both wrong and also a right-wing tactic. This is the same rhetoric that is often used by those on the right-wing of the political spectrum to discredit pro-worker stances as being bad for small businesses.
The Dore example is absolutely absurd— CA Prop 22 , AB-5 or even AB-2257 never once actually challenged the status of Yoga instructors. Yoga instructors would fall under the provision of Professional Service provider according to NFIB (NFIB AB-5 Exemptions)
To qualify the professional service provider must:
Have an established business location (may be home);
Have any required business license or occupational license;
Have the ability to negotiate rates;
Maintain the ability to set hours outside of project completion dates;
Engage in the same type of contract work with other companies, or must hold themselves out to other potential customers; and
Exercise discretion and independent judgement in their work.
Since a Yoga instructor could work at multiple gyms, negotiating multiple rates , and exercise discretion and independent judgement of their work they clear define themselves as Independent Contractor exempt professional service. And thus Dore’s complaint is completely nullified.
This shows that Dore not only missed understood the CA Prop-22’s intent, but also that deep down inside Dore’s complaint seems to becoming from a position as a small business owner who is now frightened that his ability to leverage employees with Independent Contractor Status is endangered by the new law. Well, actually it is not. California being the progressive bastion it is has given the “Jimmy Dore Show” one more gift:
Freelance Writers and Editors
Freelance writers and editors qualify as ICs only if they meet additional requirements. The exception covers freelance writers, editors, translators, copy editors, illustrators, newspaper cartoonists, still photographers, photojournalists, videographers, and photo editors who:
work under a written contract that specifies the rate and time of pay
do not directly replace an employee who performed the same work at the same volume for the hiring entity, and
do not primarily perform the work at the hiring entity's business location (this exclusion is not applicable to still photographers, photojournalists, videographers, or photo editors who work on motion pictures).
In addition, individuals who provide content for a journal, book, periodical, evaluation, other publication, or educational, academic, or instructional work in any format or media qualify as ICs, provided that:
they work under a written contract specifying the rate and time of pay and intellectual property rights
their services do not directly replace an employee who performed the same work at the same volume for the hiring entity, and
they do not primarily perform the work at the hiring firm's business location.
(Nolo AB-5 )
So, as long as Dore follows these simple rules he can still hire as many Independent
Contractors as his little heart desires to make this media empire grow! So, it is hard to understand how anyone in his audience can be blind to the fact that Dore is not a working stiff any more he is part of the Bourgeois. Every time Dore calls out worker oppression in some company or competitor like The Young Turks and their issues with Union remember that Jimmy Dore has learned very well from Cenk Uyger and will not make the same mistake. Dore knows better than to have employees that can unite—keep them as independent contractors, keep them silenced with NDA’s and finally make sure you fight for the workers by scaring them with the old it’s bad for business line if you’re not exploited! This is Independent Media exploiting the workers!
I wrote a comment on this subject but it seems to have been taken down. Another reason why Jimmy Dore is better than you. I have watched some more Dore videos and they are spot on, always for the exploited and against the two parties and tgheir sycophants, like AOC. He insists that they do not represent us
Exposing the con that is Jimmy Dore. Great work!