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Laws barring noncompete clauses spreading

businessinsurance.com

21–30 of 224 posts

Re: Laws barring noncompete clauses spreading

#21

I think a better system is an up-front repayable bonus: "We'll pay you $2k on sign-on, but you have to stay for 2 years" or something. This benefits job applicants (extra money!), employers (retention), and protects applicants (employers abusing non-compete agreements for everything), and is a far easier legal process to execute.

This seems like the equivalent of a predatory loan with the interest paid in opportunity cost, and doesn't even properly address the same problem that noncompetes do.

Re: Laws barring noncompete clauses spreading

#22
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admin assistants (like actual admin assistants) usually have access to full customer contact lists, and exposure to rather intimate details of the business and executives lives. They’re definitely not comparable to security guards in that sense.

This is not enough of an excuse to encumber someone from earning a living elsewhere. > “Employers need to get creative about how to impose restrictions to protect themselves against individuals” in whom they have made significant investments, or who have been allowed access to trade secrets, to protect themselves against such employees leaving, said Maxwell N. Shaffer, a partner with Holland & Knight LLP in Denver. T…

What is being banned are non-competes that don’t pay someone to not compete.

There are legitimate reasons for actual non-competes in many of these cases, and CAlifornia for instance just requires you pay them for it.

Which in such a situation seems justified.

Re: Laws barring noncompete clauses spreading

#24

Where I live (Norway), these laws came thanks to unions. When I graduated, all developer jobs I was offered had a noncompete clause in the contract. These were wide and potentially career-altering if enforced, barring you from doing basically any kind of work for long stretches of time. All companies when pushed basically said "ohh, we seldom enforce them, only for upper management", but still they insisted on them b…

I had a chance to visit Norway recently, and this was something that a tour guide impressed upon us about the culture; she gave an example of a restaurant in town that was caught skimming pay, and it wasn't just a union representing restaurant workers they heard from; they found themselves unable to find someone to repair plumbing or their storefront (the plumbers and glaziers wouldn't work with them), and their ingr…

This also happens in the US, it just isn't reported on heavily by the media.

When the dining workers at my university in the US were campaigning for a contract, teamsters blocked most truck deliveries to the university

Re: Laws barring noncompete clauses spreading

#26

Where I live (Norway), these laws came thanks to unions. When I graduated, all developer jobs I was offered had a noncompete clause in the contract. These were wide and potentially career-altering if enforced, barring you from doing basically any kind of work for long stretches of time. All companies when pushed basically said "ohh, we seldom enforce them, only for upper management", but still they insisted on them b…

> And pay full salary while enforced. That's a good clause, that will basically eliminate them. It makes sense from the government's standpoint, they don't want anything that restricts people's income because that restricts their (tax) income too.

> that will basically eliminate them

in NYC, it doesn't seem to stop quant firms. they have a term for it, although I forget what.

Re: Laws barring noncompete clauses spreading

#27
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admin assistants (like actual admin assistants) usually have access to full customer contact lists, and exposure to rather intimate details of the business and executives lives. They’re definitely not comparable to security guards in that sense.

There are already laws against Admin assistants from taking full customer contact lists from one job to another. You don't need non-competes to enforce that.

Really, which laws are those?

The only ones I’m aware of would be trade secret laws, but they’re dubiously applicable to bare customer contact lists.

You can make contractual restrictions of course (company property), but good luck being able to prove they actually took it unless they’re really dumb. Merely contacting all, or many, customers for instance wouldn’t prove it.

Being able to show they work for competitor x is easy, however, as is showing they’re pursuing customers in the same space.

Re: Laws barring noncompete clauses spreading

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It jumped the shark a few years back when Jimmy Johns tried to force their "sandwich artists" to sign non-competes.

Does JJ refer to their employees as sandwich artists too? I thought that was just a Subway thing. But yeah, beyond ridiculous, as if a JJ employee is going to leak some crazy trade secret to Subway or whoever.

That's the most hilarious double speak. I can only imagine the repressed artists getting told off for putting 5 slices of cheese on a foot-long instead of 4. "I was just trying to express myself, you said I was an artist."

Re: Laws barring noncompete clauses spreading

#29
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not enough of an excuse to encumber someone from earning a living elsewhere. > “Employers need to get creative about how to impose restrictions to protect themselves against individuals” in whom they have made significant investments, or who have been allowed access to trade secrets, to protect themselves against such employees leaving, said Maxwell N. Shaffer, a partner with Holland & Knight LLP in Denver. T…

What is being banned are non-competes that don’t pay someone to not compete. There are legitimate reasons for actual non-competes in many of these cases, and CAlifornia for instance just requires you pay them for it. Which in such a situation seems justified.

I agree. If you want to pay someone to sit on the bench because that has value to you ("Garden Leave"), I support that. If you want to twist their arm because you have power as an employer, nope. That's what labor law and regulation are for.

Lots of examples of malicious employers doing the latter, as you'll note the sentiment throughout the thread comments and laws intending to patch this bug in statute.

Re: Laws barring noncompete clauses spreading

#30

I think a better system is an up-front repayable bonus: "We'll pay you $2k on sign-on, but you have to stay for 2 years" or something. This benefits job applicants (extra money!), employers (retention), and protects applicants (employers abusing non-compete agreements for everything), and is a far easier legal process to execute.

That's attempting to solve a different problem (employee retention) than non-competes attempt to address in their original form.

For example, how does a company prevent (setting aside the "should they" debate) an employee from:

1) leaving and starting up a consultancy for installing former employer's software (competing with company professional services)

2) leaving and starting up a new company that is a competitor to the former company

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