American labor laws normally protect workers from retaliation for organizing, but Americans saw a dramatic exception to the rule earlier this month: After the New York offices of local-news networks DNAinfo and Gothamist voted to unionized, owner Joe Ricketts shut down the publications altogether. The move appeared to be legal—a business is always allowed cease operations for any reason, “even if it’s purely retaliatory,” as New York University labor-law professor Cynthia Estlund explained to Pacific Standard at the time.

Now, two weeks after the shutdown, the journalists’ union, Writers Guild of America–East, announced it has negotiated improved severance terms for DNAinfo and Gothamist employees. Former employees will receive three months of full pay and benefits, even if they get new jobs, plus four weeks’ severance pay. They also don’t have to sign a non-disparagement agreement. The terms apply even to non-union former DNAinfo and Gothamist employees, a DNAinfo spokeswoman told Patch. It’s not clear if these non-union employees include DNAinfo and Gothamist-network offices outside of New York—in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.—which had not unionized. A spokesman for the Writers Guild of America–East declined to answer any questions.

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“I think that this is a very substantial agreement,” says William Gould, an emeritus law professor for Stanford University and a former chairman for the National Labor Relations Board.

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While Gould and Dau-Schmidt both say the pay that former DNAinfo and Gothamist employees will receive is noteworthy, they disagree on the importance of a non-disparagement clause (or a lack of one). Gould says so long as both the union and the employees are satisfied with the parting terms, “Ricketts has little concern with disparagement and no incentive to require it.” …

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It remains to be seen whether journalists’ and other unions will be able to negotiate similarly generous terms should another anti-union company owner want to cease operations in the future. Gould thought Ricketts’ situation was “unusual.” While it’s not illegal to close your company after your employees unionize, it is illegal to threaten to do so while they’re still working. Ricketts had been open about his anti-union views—writing a blog post titled, “Why I’m Against Unions at Businesses I Create”—while his workers were still organizing. In addition, The New Yorker reported this week that management had repeatedly threatened that if writers unionized, their publications would be closed, according to staffers. Although there’s little recourse now that the company is shuttered, it’s possible the union used Ricketts’ and his leaders’ past threats as leverage, Gould says.