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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: 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