Non-competes have been null and void in California for some time. Employees can also recover attorney fees if someone tries to enforce one. It’s one of the reasons startups can be started here without fear of persecution by a previous employer.
It’s great to see this become national policy.
I have a small consulting company. I had a client hand me a non-compete. He listed my name and that I essentially couldn’t work for any IT entity in the state. I signed it.
I don’t do business as me, I do business as my company. And it was 100% unenforceable since he was trying to say that by doing a single job for his company would prevent me from doing business with his competitors. His lawyer even laughed about it when reaching out as he knew it was a sad attempt to force contractors to accept his contracts over other entities.
Even he didn’t know how they work and he was handing them out like candy.
I’ve had a few of these. Honestly, they’re pretty hard to actually trigger. At least in mine, short of something along the lines of corporate espionage or insider trading, there’s not much in there that’s vague enough to hinder career prospects since, I assume, they’re legally not allowed to. It’s generally been, “You can’t work for another company on this very specific thing you never heard of before starting here and will probably never hear of again, for the next 24 months.”
Haven’t heard of them being misused for retention out in the wild, but I assume they must be enough to cause this.
At least in mine, short of something along the lines of corporate espionage or insider trading
Normally that would be covered by something like an NDA or Non-Solicitation, rather than a Non-comp - or even just federal law for something like insider trading.
It’s true though, Non-comps are usually unfair and unnecessary and overly restrictive.
I have. A guy was an electronics sales account manager at a previous job. He came to work for us as an IT services sales manager. Two or three months in, the previous employer called us and said his noncompete covered everything related to technology (or maybe just a combination of sales and technology), so he left.
That’s not how a free job market is supposed to work.
Yes, you’re right.
And so non-competes should indeed be banned.
My last company sued at least two former employees that I know about. The thing with non competes isn’t that the company makes money back by suing. It’s more worth it for them to file suit if the executive’s pride is hurt or if they want to send a message to other employees.
They have been used in incredibly generic jobs like fast food restaurants
Healthcare, specifically providers, are extremely hampered by these. Imagine working at a hospital in a big city and you must sign a noncompete that blocks you from working at any other hospital system within 50 miles. If you’re a specialist, it’s worse than that because you can’t exactly flex into another role easily.
The last noncompete I signed, I wrote in the margins, in pen, that I was allowed to do anything I wanted so long as it didn’t directly harm the interests of the company I was leaving. They signed it.
Thank you Biden
Within hours of the vote, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce pledged to sue the agency over the rule.
Fuck those guys.
The chamber of commerce can get fucked.
I’m pretty sure their founding documents include “shafting workers and consumers” as a core mission.
I’m writing in Lina Khan for president.
I protest voted one year because I hated the candidates. That was the year Trump got elected. I’m never doing that again. Lina’s well worth supporting in the next few elections, but the real options this year are already set. Everything else is equivalent to not voting at all.
Removed by mod
Someone’s scared his team isn’t going to win
I’m often torn when talking about how to vote in US elections because you guys have to balance ideology with the need to be pragmatic far more due to the First Past the Post (FPTP) voting system. The only way that Democrats get a serious signal that they need to move left is by voting for far-left candidates, even those who aren’t on the ballot, but that runs the risk of handing the election to the Republicans.
Y’all seriously need some Ranked Choice (RC) voting. I have never once voted for a major party number 1 in any election I’ve participated in, and that’s never caused my vote to be ‘wasted’ like it can be under FPTP. Mandatory voting would really help too - it would expose the fact that Republicans only make up around 30% of all people and they’d never be able to govern outside a coalition ever again.
I firmly believe that if the US got rid of the primary elections and implemented both RC and mandatory voting, we’d be nearing the end of Bernie Sanders’ second term right now.
Y’all seriously need some Ranked Choice (RC) voting.
I really would like nothing more than to get some tasty, tasty STAR voting up in this mess we call a democracy.
It’s always discouraging to me that when the topic of alternate voting methods comes up, RCV is always mentioned as the way to go. It seems to be the alternative voting method most people are familiar with.
RCV has it’s problems and there are demonstrably better voting systems such as you said STAR voting.
It’s not that it runs the risk, it’s a guarantee. There’s no situation in which another more leftist party gaining a significant number of votes doesn’t mean handing the presidency over to the republican party. Fptp is a really bad system.
STAR or ranked choice voting wouldn’t really fix the big issue. The issue is that we live in a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, not that we don’t have enough bourgeois parties able to compete.
STAR voting, or ranked robin are possibilities as well. RCV has it’s problems. https://www.equal.vote/star_vs_rcv
If you want ranking Ranked Robin is better than RCV https://www.equal.vote/ranked_robin
Blaming voters for the results of a liberal democracy is like blaming consumers who don’t recycle their plastic for climate change.
I have had a low key crush on her since I heard her on John Stewart. She is smart AF!
The people against this might not realize people like the fed/SEC also want less rules about working for their competitors
Good news. Anything that gives Workers an improvement in power should be fully supported.
Good on them. Noncompete clauses are bullshit and yet another tool to take away workers’ rights.
NonCompete about to get a huge surge of subscribers.
