White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many workers
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Re: White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many workers
#2The Great Recession happened 8 years ago and they're just now discussing changes to protect workers?
Re: White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many workers
#3This seems to explicitly not include workers who are privvy to trade secrets based on a quick skim, so I guess all of us tech workers wouldn't have anything changed sadly.
Re: White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many workers
#4Note that this is being proposed as something states should do. Federal legislation is not being proposed. Worst case would be Federal legislation which was weak and pre-empted state legislation, weakening California's ban.
California employment law prohibits non-compete agreements for employees, and has since 1872. California also prohibits any employee agreement which claims employer ownership of intellectual property developed on the employee's own time.[1] This is one reason Silicon Valley is so successful.
[1] http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab&gr...
Re: White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many workers
#5Why can't congress do something about this? Non-competes are clearly terrible for workers, and should at the least be illegal without a severance agreement. If a company wants to keep me from working they should pay for the privilege. Workers also need to start refusing to sign egregiously bad non-compete agreements.
Re: White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many workers
#6This seems to explicitly not include workers who are privvy to trade secrets based on a quick skim, so I guess all of us tech workers wouldn't have anything changed sadly.
^ My thoughts exactly.
> The Obama administration on Tuesday also urged states to ban non-compete agreements that are not proposed before a job offer or promotion is accepted and said employers should not be able to enforce the agreements when workers are laid off.
It's unclear to me if the empathized part was meant to be a general statement, so that could affect tech workers.
Re: White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many workers
#7Note that this is being proposed as something states should do. Federal legislation is not being proposed. Worst case would be Federal legislation which was weak and pre-empted state legislation, weakening California's ban. California employment law prohibits non-compete agreements for employees, and has since 1872. California also prohibits any employee agreement which claims employer ownership of intellectual prope…
These two points are awesome. Every state could use that. Both are not prohibited in Ohio.
Re: White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many workers
#8IANAL but my understanding is that non-competes are essentially unenforceable in Texas.
Re: White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many workers
#9I just signed one of these ridiculous clauses because pretty much everyone is just slapping this into their contracts now.
Law needs to catch up on this one and fast. I like the idea of making non-compete enforceable only if you can prove malicious intent. Similar to how tax works. If onus is on the tax payer to prove that if you buy something and sell it at profit you must prove that the _intention_ was not to turn a profit if you want to pay capital gains tax and not income tax on the profit.
Except the burden on proof must be skewed in favor of the employee and the proof of intent needs to sit with the employer if they want to enforce. E.g. If I go to market and get an offer (say at some competitor), you have first right of refusal to give me a counter. If you refuse to counter you cannot enforce your non-compete. This is fair imho. Lots of problems regarding "trade secrets" etc. but the law should be highly weighted towards the idea of "innocent by until proven guilty" for the employee.
Re: White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many workers
#10Non-competes, the most anti-innovation, anti-skilled worker, anti-free market, anti-business and anti-American thing in working today. Non-competes are protectionism for larger businesses over small/medium businesses.
As a freelancer, contractor and self-employed business owner/worker, please make these illegal, tired of these.
The worst part about non-competes is they are blanket protectionism usually and up to 2+ years of non-compete, this sometimes happens on a job that is only 1-3 months. You have to laugh at those types of situations. Usually the client will push them aside or lower the time to the job plus some time, but both non-competes and arbitration agreements are horrible for workers in today's economy where people change jobs frequently and many are self-employed/freelancing/contracting.
The non-compete should not exist, at the core removing competition from skilled workers in our economy is bad all around, unless you are one of the current big fish.