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- cross-posted to:
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The Federal Trade Commission narrowly voted Tuesday to ban nearly all noncompetes, employment agreements that typically prevent workers from joining competing businesses or launching ones of their own.
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What gets me is how controversial things like this are in the US. Non-competes are antisocial, because they blunt one of the few mechanisms capitalism has to keep employers in check – labor market mobility. One of the things that’s supposed to make capitalism kind of okay is the fact that “if you don’t like it, you can go elsewhere.” Well, if you’re not allowed to start a business or get another job in your line of work for like years after you leave, how the hell are you supposed to actually do that? How does the labor market route around bad employers when workers are literally trapped?
Way I see it, a non-compete is just an employer’s way of telling you they’d keep you trapped in a box in your off-hours if they could.
My country has non-competes in the most sensible way: if you don’t want the employee to go to a competitor, you must pay him what he could earn at the competitor during the duration of the non-compete. Employee quits? He can either join the competitor or you can pay him as long as you want him away from the competitor.
Will employers still put non-applicable non-competes? They sure do and I smile when I see those baseless clauses. Have they tried enforcing them at the “work tribunals” (free for the employee), yes they have and they’ve been laughed off by the judges.
Your country sounds great!
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Is it controversial? The only support I’ve heard for them comes from corps, sleazy executives looking to control their employees. Everyone else is like”meh, clearly unfair and should be illegal but I can’t do anything about it and still have a job”
I remember my last job had a Non compete. I was a handy man. Non competes for NBA players and wealthy CEOs, fine. But non compete for just regular people doing regular jobs is crazy. Once I leave my current job, my ex employer should have no say in where I work afterwards.
Why is good for athletes and ceos? And is that the specific line that you would draw? NC seems like it benefits corporations and organizations but almost never individuals. Seems better to eliminate all together to me.
It’s fine for them because they’re being paid tens and hundreds of millions. And they can easily reject the contract and not sign. Don’t act like a cleaning lady and an NBA player are in the same boat
“It’s fine for them” isn’t a reason to keep something in place. That will just allow it to creep closer and closer to the cleaning lady (I don’t think many cleaning ladies are signing non competes though - this is not a representative example). Non competes are typically for higher level talent, the line between it specialist, physicians, minor league athletes and ceos and NBA players starts to blur. There is no good argument to keep these.
Non competes for NBA players
This sounds so stupid. Big sport is dead. Go play chess.
Huh? What are you even getting offended at? Are you just seeking out things to be mad at?
Offended? Why? I’m just saying that if this is true, then “big sport” is more broken than I imagined. And that chess is good sport that does not have such bullshit.
And if your employer doesn’t want you working elsewhere, they should put you on garden leave.
Executives make some sense because they made deciding the direction of companies, and can take “unfair advantage”.
Athletes, no. They bring mostly their own talent and effort, and that’s also what they bring to a new team. They are only employable by doing the same thing for someone else, and likely in the same league: literally competing . Non-competes don’t make any more sense for athletes than they do for baristas
Well holy shit, when did they grow teeth? … and balls?
Don’t worry. The supreme Court will find a reason that their existence is unconstitutional soon
that their existence is unconstitutional soon
The new rule, or teeth and balls?
The entire existence of the FTC lol.
Oh damn… I gotta think bigger.
Yes
Pshhh how else would Clarence scrape Harland’s balls?
Even something positive always needs to be a backhanded compliment on lemmy
I’m sure the regulator isn’t going to be offended.
Incredibly based
If you were as confused by this as I was:
Shortly after the vote, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it would sue the FTC to block the rule
The US Chamber of Commerce is a right-wing lobbying group for businesses, unrelated to the US Department of Commerce which is an actual government agency.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Chamber_of_Commerce
Vote went along party lines.
But MuH bOTh SiDeS, right guys?
I always thought non-competes were total bullshit anyways. Like a scare tactic or something. And unenforceable.
Didn’t matter and sure doesn’t now.
They probably were, but to find out you’d have to go to court, and your average person doesn’t want to do that.
It’s doesn’t matter if you want to go to court. Your future employer doesn’t want to go to court on behalf of a new hire, so they won’t hire you in the first place.
I had a non-compete handed to me when I lived in California. I laughed my ass off and signed it. When I left the dumbass VP of HR threatened me with it.
My response was “Could you pretty please try to enforce it? My lawyer would absolutely love to represent me in court. FYI you know my lawyer. He was the paralegal that told you the non-compete contract wasn’t legal. You then screwed him over and got him laid him off. Guess who passed the bar exam 6 months ago!”
They are illegal in sane countries. Sadly, my country(Russia) is not very sane, so they are only unenforcable here. At least as far as I know.
Damn, Lina Khan has been killing it lately.
In some countries this has long been handled by requiring that non-competes are only enforceable if the
employeremployee keeps on getting paid during the non-compete period.Want to restrict my freedom of trading my work, pay up!
Employee
Fixed. Cheers!
Is this what they make you sign that says
“You can’t join any company that is in the same industry or has the same customers for 2 years after leaving the present company”
?
Yes.
Lol what. That doesn’t make any sense. Are you supposed to just sit for 2 years doing nothing unless you’re trained on two completely different fields?
Holy shit, I had to sign one for my current job
I’ve had one in previous contracts. I smirked since they aren’t applicable in my country unless they are willing to pay me to vacation.
ive signed one for every job I’ve ever worked, I think. UK and USA, employment and contractor. And then hopped competitors and to my knowledge no one even so much as raised an eyebrow.
“nearly”? What the fuck, America, they ALL should be banned.
The ban, which will take effect later this year, carves out an exception for existing noncompetes that companies have given their senior executives, on the grounds that these agreements are more likely to have been negotiated. The FTC says employers should not enforce other existing noncompete agreements.
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the fact that non competes and NDAs are a thing upon leaving a company is fucking insane to me, seems like blackmail at best and straight illegal at worst.
But what do i know, i just like having rights.
Worker: “Well, I got laid off from the job I’ve been working for the last 20 years, but at least I have the skills I picked up along the way!”
Company: “Actually, those belong to us too.”
companies: we need workers to specialize so that we can produce things of high quality.
also companies: What you specialized? Sounds like your problem dumbass.
Fuck yes let’s go! I am pumped.
*So what’s the historical use of these? I can only assume in the past it was used sparingly, then went further and further until the current state of “fuck you employees”.
Wow that’s actually good. So who did this, where’d they put the original people, and how can we replicate the results with every other regulatory body?
