“What are your thoughts on the new federal rule making non-competes unenforceable? #federalrule #noncompetes #unenforceable #debate
Have you heard about the recent federal ruling regarding non-compete agreements? This could have a significant impact on businesses and employees alike. Let’s delve into some key points to consider:
What is the new federal rule about non-competes?
– The federal rule states that non-compete agreements are now unenforceable.
How does this affect businesses and employees?
– Businesses may need to rethink their hiring and retention strategies.
– Employees could have more freedom to pursue new opportunities without fear of legal retribution.
What are the potential consequences of this ruling?
– There could be a shift in power dynamics between employers and employees.
– Innovation and competition in the market may increase.
Share your take on this ruling and join the conversation. It’s a hot topic that’s worth discussing! #shareyourthoughts #federalruling #noncompetes“
– Businesses may need to rethink their hiring and retention strategies.
– Employees could have more freedom to pursue new opportunities without fear of legal retribution.
Thank god, it’s about time. It’s absurd that an employer can dictate what other jobs you’re allowed to take (or not).
I guess it means I can finally leave this dead-end job.
I think it’s great. I never liked these silly noncompete agreements anyway and my understanding is in a lot of places they weren’t enforceable to begin with. Good riddance to bad rubbish
Good. Non competes were historically used to abuse the working class. So I’m glad they are dead.
Efffing fantastic. 9 out of 10 Noncompetes are abusive.
Non-competes make sense in two situations:
1. You are so high up the chain of command and are so deeply enmeshed in the strategy and trade secrets of your business that a simple Non-Disclosure Agreement cannot possibly cover the bases needed to prevent you from sharing that information with a direct competitor if they were to hire you.
2. You are in a sales role that is heavily relationship-based and it is inevitable that most of your customers would follow you if you were to switch to a competitor in the same area.
*However*, in my experience non-competes are almost always used instead as an anti-poaching tool, to make it harder for employees to find another job if they were to leave, in order to depress salaries and improve worker retention. That is both extremely shitty and unconstitutional as hell – people have a right to find employement.
It’s a great ruling and I hope it’s enforced.
Feels appropriate for a free country
To all the upper management complaining that they can no longer substitute noncompete agreements for trying to make people actually want to keep working at your company: You brought this on yourself, now go fuck yourselves.
I think it’s great, but I was under the impression non-compete clauses were largely unenforceable in the vast majority of cases already. Codifying it will protect people from being bullied by shitty bosses which is the main benefit for most people.
I live in California, where this has been the law since the 19th century. Stanford/Silicon Valley won over the MIT/Boston area as the center of the reach industry in no small part because of that rule – much easier to branch out and start something new if your old boss doesn’t still own your skills.
Doesn’t directly affect me, but it’s about time the rest of the country catches up. And it’s yet another way that Democrats and Republicans are not the same, and that Joe Biden has way over-performed expectations.
Good riddance! I’ve seen companies make non-competes for jobs they had no business making non-competes for. A local university gym made it’s personal trainers sign a non-compete, meaning they could not work as a trainer or fitness instructor in any other gym both during their employement at the university gym and for 6 months afterwards. Then they were shocked when most of their training staff quit. A whole bunch of morons for a “university” fitness center.
It’s overall a good thing given the number of people I know who thought they were bound by a ridiculous NC at one point or another. Several times I’ve had long conversations convincing people that your employer has no real hope to bar you from working in your field.
That said, silly NCs used to be a great way to weed out bad employers. It was like they were raising their hands to say “hey, before you take this job, just so you know, we’re clueless and shitty”
My noncompete trapped me in an abusive/toxic workplace for years. I only got out after keeping a year long paper trail of the harassment I was experiencing and getting lawyers involved, and even then, my lawyer could only tell me that the noncompete “probably” wouldn’t hold up in court. The employer eventually gave in to releasing me from SOME of the terms of the noncompete, but only after I provided my written notice that I was not renewing my contract at the end of the term no matter what and made it clear I was prepared to go to court. I turned in my notice knowing I would have to either be unemployed (at least in my field of expertise) for several years, or I’d have to move my family members from their career and schools so I could find a job. It’s absolutely terrifying to quit your job with no prospects, but it’s worse to know you have to choose between your family’s happiness and being able to pay the bills to get out of an abusive workplace.
Fuck noncompetes. This is a huge win for workers.
It’s great. It also shows the difference between Republicans and Democrats, just in case you needed more evidence of a difference.
Most current Non-compete’s are broken when taken to court already.
I always signed them, no one ever enforced them. Glad it’s 100% now, but it always felt like 100%
I’ll accept a non-compete agreement when the company accepts a non-termination agreement.
A business cannot take away your right to find another job without first guaranteeing that job.
And since they seem entirely unwilling to do that, instead simply laying off Mass amounts of workers whenever their executives need a boost to their bonus for that quarter… I’m real glad the FTC told em to “f*** off”
Good. Time to start looking for a new job!
The harm done to employees by non-competes is likely to be far greater than the harm done to employers by former employees. Of course some employers are damaged when an employee leaves. On the other hand, ALL employees are harmed by non-competes.
It should have happened a long time ago. My old boss tried to make it to where I couldn’t work in IT support for 10 years in our state and all the states bordering our state.
All they were really used for was to keep pay low and abuse employees. If you don’t want an employee to leave fucking take care of them with pay raises, a generous PTO package (None of this bullshit unlimited PTO) and a good work life balance.
The Supreme Court as it is will strike it down and probably a bunch of other FTC worker protections with it.
I’m amazing it wasn’t killed off by bribes err “lobbying”.
100% agree with it. At-will employment should mean entirely at-will.
The last noncompete I dealt with was after working for a large construction firm for several years, they asked me to sign a noncompete and I actually laughed. When the reiterated the request for me to sign I said if they paid me 20k on the spot I’d sign it, they never brought it up again.
Abject Ignorant Abuse of Power and Usurper of Freedom: 0
Sanity: 1
There is no reason other than an abuse of power, or a whacked-out legal counsel, that employees working in non-trust or even proprietary work should be limited in any way from leaving a firm and seeking other employment within the field.
Im just shocked our government is doing something positive.
Also, this is amazing. While I never had to worry, I had a lot of peers that were kinda stuck because of non-competes.
It’s long overdue.
It’s fantastic, and one more shackle off the American Worker.
The next fall has to be Employer Supplied Health Insurance.
The main reason the non-competes even exist is so they can pay employees who have access to proprietary data less than they should.
If you have an employee who has INTEGRAL knowledge of your system and business practices you’re SUPPOSED to pay them a wage that encourages them to stay with your company… instead, they made the employee sign a non-compete.
I’m so glad this bullshit is going away.
I’m a musician. A company that had me as a seasonal hire tried to make me sign a *3 year* non-compete clause. For a gig that paid maybe $2k. I crossed it out before signing it, but it’s outrageous what companies think they should be able to get away with.
My state has had legislation that makes non-competes illegal since 2019. I’m actually surprised the federal government caught up so quickly!
Noncompete agreements can make sense in some very limited situations. If businesses had kept noncompete agreements exclusively for those specific situations, they wouldn’t be banned. However, businesses wanted to use it as an employee retention tool instead of as a tool to protect actual trade secrets. They abused their tool, so it gets taken away.
The real onus should be simply that with a NC comes an employment contract that pays you in full for the length of the non compete term, with all ancillary benefits included. If you don’t want me to work, then pay me. This clause is used to stifle competition in the workforce, and yet one more example of US free market capitalism not adhering to free market principles.
Absolutely love it. I work in a rather niche industry, so a non-compete clause would completely screw me for the set amount of time until I could work in the industry again. But that’s usually the point of non-compete clauses. To screw an employee for having the gall to leave.
I think there are some very limited cases where non-competes should be allowed.
Like if you sell your business, it should be allowed to add a non-compete with the former owner.
Otherwise there are other options like non-poaching agreements that make more sense than non-competes.
One point I haven’t seen many people say:
Transferring of employees from company to company within the industry will overall round out the workforce, gain skills for employees and true industry knowledge, and push workplaces to be more competitive.
Both bad employers and bad employees will weed themselves out and it will be a positive impact on everyone who works hard and employers who treat their employees well.
Coming from someone who did everything right transferring with a non-compete and my former boss still made my life a living hell for up to a year after I joined my new employer with legal battles….this is a breath of fresh air.
I think it’s good to severely limit the circumstances win which jobs require employees to sign no-compete, arbitration or non-disclosure agreements. It’s fine to agree to any of those things if you’re a highly skilled individual who can negotiate for millions in compensation in regard to signing any of the former. It shouldn’t be available in situations where the employee has no other options.
I’m a small business owner–non-competes stating that you can’t work for a competitor have always been silly, but I do think there’s something to a high-level employee not being able to go to a direct competitor and immediately call all of our clients to try and get them to switch. It’s unclear to me if everything in a non-compete is now unenforceable or if it is just the parts that prohibit people from getting jobs with competitors.
NCA’s are a bad joke that needed to go away. What was intended as a tool to prevent theft of trade secrets, industrial sabotage, and the like was instead repurposed by corporations as a way to coerce employees to accept substandard pay and working conditions by bullying and threatening them into signing said agreements, and as a way to hold employees hostage by punishing them for seeking to actively improve their pay and working conditions.
In a way, it would be like saying “Hey, I know you’re in an abusive relationship with your partner, but your marriage to them is a binding legal contract, so suck it up, buttercup.” Just substitute “employer” for “partner” and “employment” for “marriage” and you’re there.
Unfortunately, I do not think this change survives judiciary review by the Supreme Court; if a case with standing were to receive certiorari, this rules change may be perceived as an infringement on the rights of individuals (a corporation is a person under the law) to enter into contracts. The heavily conservative and pro-business members of the Court are likely to be the strongest advocates against allowing this rules change to stand. I am not a lawyer but this merits further review by constitutional / employment legal analysts.
It’s not a rule just yet … And will likely get some revisions before it is. After the vote these things take time.
But it’s great!
Non-competes basically always were, because the state mostly looked at them as keeping someone from employment. If someone is like a founding Engineer CTO and then tries to take proprietary tech with them to some competitor I think there should at least be a mechanism of recourse to sue that person, but that said, I work in tech and i’ve signed a million of those things just to job hop to a competitor multiple times with zero issues. Tech sort of set it up in Cali in the 70’s that they wouldn’t use contracts and that movement of developers and engineers around was actually in all their benefits so it’s sort of become a “cultural” element in tech over the years. Although, i’m sure someones been sued for this.
People will job hop more. Companies will try harder (pay more $$$) to keep their technical folks. Overall very positive.
They are fairly valid. Problem is they were abused in industries where they weren’t designed for, and/or abused the length of pause. Shame but also good?
I mean they really never have been enforceable at a general level, almost impossible to win in court and not worth the money to even try.
non soliciting, Intellectual property and or trade secrets are a different story