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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: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday February 17, @10:17AM (8 children)
I've been known to draw a strike-through line in a contract, and initial it, to show that I will not honor that part of the contract. Super silly example:
I had to submit an "application" for electric service in my new home, 30 plus years ago. The "appliction" had a section on generators. Words to the effect, "I promise not to have any generators on my property." I was smart enough to understand that they prohibited hooking up a generator to the house, in such a fashion that it might electrocute electrical workers during a power outage. However, the wording was crap. Agreeing to that term, as written, would have precluded possession of ANY generator, for any purpose. I struck out that paragraph, and initialed it.
So, you're applying for a job? You strike out terms that you can't live with. You don't get the job? Oh well, you've done yourself a favor. You couldn't live with that particular portion of the contract, so you're still free to find a job with a better contract.
And, you will be surprised how often your objection is accepted, papers filed, and you get the job anyway.
Just remember, the time to negotiate that contract is before you are hired. You can't alter the contract in your favor after it is filed in your personnel record.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 17, @10:48AM (5 children)
I've strike-thru too, and got turned down.
No biggie though. That company was so full of useless middle managers that it would have been damn near impossible to get anything done anyway.
The company was so paralyzed that eventually their customers found other entities that could get the job done. I ended up working for one of them, with a lot less stressful environment.
We all knew how to do what our customer wanted us to do, but I don't think a one of us could please that investment group that was so enamored with all their finesse in crafting all that litigious paperwork for us to sign.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Opportunist on Friday February 17, @12:04PM (4 children)
I can one-up that one. I struck parts of the contract and got accepted. They simply didn't read their own contract anymore after I sign it.
How I know? Because they complained about me doing something the strike-through clause would have prevented. I asked them to show me that line in my contract, they gave me the template contract, I asked to be shown that line in MY contract ... next message I got came from their lawyer.
Fortunately, in my country, you have access to very cheap and very capable work-related lawyers (costs a bit of your income by default, some of that wonderful "socialism" we have here), I handed that to them and they got me quite a tidy sum of money.
Read contracts I give back to you. Just because you draft them doesn't mean I don't read them and sign them. I do read them. You should, too.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 17, @02:17PM (2 children)
> They simply didn't read their own contract anymore after I sign it.
When I strike out part of a contract, I also make sure to tell the sender that I made a change and make sure they understand it up front.
Your way, if I understand it correctly is to send back the contract with changes and no other notification or discussion. That would get me a bad reputation in my line of engineering work--and in my specialized field the "village" of people that do this kind of work isn't all that big.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Friday February 17, @05:16PM (1 child)
Actually I do notify them. Apparently nobody cares.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 17, @06:58PM
> Actually I do notify them. Apparently nobody cares.
Thanks for the followup. Sounds like we are on the same page ethically!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday February 17, @10:45PM
One upping that: apparently my company lost my boss' signed agreements about everything. HR can be really sloppy some times, and it matters. He more or less retired on the job for 3 years while he looked for a better opportunity, it was hard to find but eventually he did.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by GloomMower on Friday February 17, @06:07PM (1 child)
I was working for a company that was getting bought. They wanted all the employees to sign an agreement before the sale could take place. It had stuff like, the new company owns anything you thought of during work hours or not since you worked there. I struck out a lot of the lines in that agreement.
I was surprised how many people just signed it, and it was difficult to find anyone else that had issues with the document.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 17, @07:02PM
> I was surprised how many people just signed it
One possible conclusion? All those people who "just signed it" never had an original idea. Or, less harshly, an original idea worth keeping.