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The US Federal Trade Commission wants to ban non-compete agreements:
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently proposed a regulation banning employers from imposing non-compete "agreements" on their workers.
[...] The FTC summed up my feeling about non-compete clauses.
It called them "a widespread and often exploitative practice that suppresses wages, hampers innovation, and blocks entrepreneurs from starting new businesses." Thus, the Commission concluded, "By stopping this practice, the agency estimates that the new proposed rule could increase wages by nearly $300 billion per year and expand career opportunities for about 30 million Americans."
That, by the FTC's count, is one in five Americans. So it's not just tech or highly skilled jobs getting hit.
As the New York Times pointed out, it also includes sandwich makers, hair stylists, and summer camp counselors. So yes. Seriously, there are non-competes for teenagers working as counselors.
[...] Sure, there are reasonable exceptions. For example, if I leave your company, I have no problem agreeing that I won't reveal your secret sauce to a competitor or use it in my own business.
But the FTC isn't talking about getting rid of non-disclosure agreements (NDA)s — unless these NDAs are written so broadly that they act as de facto non-competes. That's a different and uglier story.
[...] While proprietary business information and technology secrets are what people often think about protecting with non-competes, that's often not the case.
Instead, it's all about making sure your workers can't leave. For example, the US fast food chain Jimmy John's used to forbid its sandwich makers from joining similar businesses within two miles of its stores for two years. The courts finally forced the company to drop that non-compete clause.
Ridiculous demands like that underline the real purpose of most non-compete agreements: keeping workers by hook or by crook for the least amount of pay.
[...] If you want happier, more productive staffers, don't handcuff them to your company with non-compete agreements. It never ends up well for anybody.
Have any of you been asked to sign an outrageous non-compete?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 17, @06:26AM (14 children)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Opportunist on Friday February 17, @11:58AM (12 children)
In the good old days, this was even a requirement for apprentices and journeymen (notice the journey in that name) if they wanted to be admitted to the guilds, they needed to show that they had learned from different masters and were in the employ of different people, usually also requiring in different towns, to be taken serious enough to become a master themselves and join the guilds.
(Score: 4, Informative) by RamiK on Friday February 17, @01:42PM (4 children)
That's probably wrong for England. As often mentioned when discussing the original rational behind copyright and patent terms, apprenticeship was a legally defined institute in common law (that was something between indebted servitude, slavery and non-competes):
( a quote of a quote of a quote... from the footnotes of https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2020-02/lester-zhu-auilr-v34n4.pdf [cato.org] (p.5) )
So, if my reading is right, an apprentice was bound to a specific master for 7 years in the sense that they'd have to leave the city/nation if they wanted to practice without their master's permission and before the term was up. Patents and copyright are multipliers on that. Non-competes are a "modern" (read: throwback) variation.
Things were likely different in different periods and places... But fundamentally, I believe the apprenticeship institute was always a form of bondage otherwise the master wouldn't be called a master.
compiling...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by canopic jug on Friday February 17, @02:06PM (1 child)
The word 'master' there is used in the context of the art or skill which they have mastered.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Friday February 17, @07:06PM
That's the whole point: English society (at least as far back as Elizabethan times when it inherits the word from French/German/Latin in one order or the next) didn't distinguish skill mastery from the hierarchical position / owner-of-man so it was reflected in the English language. You can contrast this with how servant and slave were made separate due to how slaves of god (Church officials) and servants of the king (Government ministers) were: When the social status was clearly separate, a new word was required.
Etymology is effect. Not cause.
compiling...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Opportunist on Friday February 17, @05:24PM (1 child)
Quite interesting, it was very different here on the continent. Journeymen worked for a rather moderate salary, while getting board and food from their master and were free, and often required, to move on when Spring arrives, to another town or even another state. There are many stories of how masters tried to keep their good journeymen by better treatment and even giving them the prospect of inheriting his shop (usually by virtue of marriage to the master's daughter), it's the staple of 17th and 18th century middle-class romantic literature and operetta).
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday February 17, @07:54PM
Again, it strongly depends on the time, place (and trade). The first paragraph here paints a fairly grim picture: https://books.google.com/books?id=MfrTvg1eMOIC&pg=PA166 [google.com] (fuller but (pay?)walled scan: https://www.academia.edu/21005082/Learning_on_the_Shop_Floor) [academia.edu]
A more positive take can be seen here around page 15/16 starting with:
( https://moodle.adaptland.it/pluginfile.php/53711/mod_data/content/172114/EconomicsofApprenticeship-revised-1oyshc9.pdf [adaptland.it] "Institutions and Apprenticeship" )
The experts aren't in agreement on the analysis and nuances but we can at least say it strongly depends on the when and where.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Friday February 17, @03:18PM (6 children)
We don't have a software guild. (should we?)
One can show their proficiency by creating open source code for everyone to see what they can do. Even if it is sponsored by some company. Maybe there should be more of this?
And in the name of the lollipop guild, we wish to welcome you to munchkin land.
The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Friday February 17, @04:31PM (3 children)
That's a problem. We need the "skilled artisans" that the master craftsmen were, but we don't want the period of bondage that the apprentices were forced to endure. What we've got is "everyone's a journeyman". (Even if you're under a non-compete, the one holding you in bondage isn't a master of the craft.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Saturday February 18, @01:18AM (2 children)
More to the point, employers refuse to hire anyone who needs to grow in to the job. In programming, people who did well on a general aptitude test were hired as a junior programmer where they would learn from the senior programmers until they were ready for promotion.
Today those with aptitude are expected to go into debt to pay for 4 years of education just to be considered for employment.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Saturday February 18, @01:25PM (1 child)
A university degree does not make you a competent coder or Software Engineer. It should give you a good grounding in all the important concepts to start you off on your career. Becoming competent and proficient takes many years of practise under the watchful eye of experts.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Saturday February 18, @05:56PM
I agree, it does not. It doesn't even assure that you will ever be any good. But for some reason, HR has enshrined it as the holy requirement even above actual experience.
And without the internal structure for mentoring and learning, many never get all that good. That's why there's so much crap software out there and why there are so many software shops that can't seem to produce hello world without a flavor of the month framework and 3 or 4 libraries.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Friday February 17, @05:27PM (1 child)
Nope, I was talking about the good old days, when crafts were organized in guilds who were eager to provide some territory protection to their members. Kinda like how ISPs work today, when you think about it.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday February 17, @06:21PM
We still have the Screen Actors Guild.
The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday February 17, @12:56PM
Or, if you have any stones at all, you label such an agreement unconscionable and simply ignore it.
The only people who will devalue you after you do that are those who feel they need a non-compete agreement with you too.
Just after starting a new job (having relocated the family 1000 miles to do so) I was handed an over the top non employment for 10 years in any related industry agreement and I simply refused to sign. I got some verbal abuse from the CEO who complained "we all already signed this" to which I replied: "maybe those terms don't matter to you but they are unacceptable to me and my ability to provide for my family, either revise it to something that doesn't hurt me or forget it." They forgot it.
Later in that same town a company I worked for laid off the whole workforce then gave us outrageous "I promise never to say anything bad about the company, or sue the company, or disclose the existence of this agreement" things they wanted us to sign. "What am I getting in exchange for signing this?'. "Nothing.". Well, then it's not a valid contract to start with, but... I'm not signing anyway. Call me when you have a better offer, but know that I am not waiting for that call.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end