Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Is This the End of Non-Compete Contracts?

posted by hubie on Friday February 17, @06:07AM   Printer-friendly

upstart writes:

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?

Original Submission

 
This discussion was created by hubie (1068) for logged-in users only, but now has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Is This the End of Non-Compete Contracts? | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 33 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by RamiK on Friday February 17, @01:42PM (4 children)

    by RamiK (1813) on Friday February 17, @01:42PM (#1292158)

    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):

    HEETAL THAKUR, PATENTING IN INDIA 61 (2014) (“After the enactment of Statute of Monopolies, the development of the law was left to the courts with few interventions by parliament until 1883. It was soon decided that a patentee must do something to make it possible for others to carry out the manner after the monopoly had expired. At first, it appears to have been sufficient if the patentee trained two apprentices who could later carry out the method. The time period of training an apprentice as seven years and the time taken for training two apprentices, i.e. 14 years, came to be equated with term of patent.”); see also O’Connor, supra note 18, at 1477 n.520 (“Some commentators have speculated that this is where the early patent terms of 14 and 21 years come from. As multiples of seven, which was the number of years of a standard apprenticeship, the period of exclusivity would last through at least two generations of apprentices. This would both keep the master’s apprentices from competing with him too soon (limiting the value of his patent grant) and keep the master training successive generations of apprentices in order to keep his grant.”);

    ( 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...
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Interesting=1, Informative=1, Total=2
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   4  

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by canopic jug on Friday February 17, @02:06PM (1 child)

    by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 17, @02:06PM (#1292162) Journal

    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

      by RamiK (1813) on Friday February 17, @07:06PM (#1292249)

      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)

    by Opportunist (5545) on Friday February 17, @05:24PM (#1292201)

    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).