That’s OK, they are getting to be too many people there anyway. But is a friggin’ beautiful state.
(grew up there, haven’t lived there for years, but there was always a bit of “please come visit, but please don’t stay because we just don’t want that many people living here crowding our favorite outdoorsy places”)
We were in Idaho Falls a week ago Sunday. The southern half of Idaho is LDS territory (Rexburg had a BYU campus) and most small businesses (and a few chain stores) were closed on Sunday. However, I did take a bath at Fairfield Suites on Sunday and no one came knocking at my door.
I’m near Boston. Those are OUR laws about bathing and mattresses and non-competes I was referring to.
And Akamai. And GE.
we’re fine.
Sorry. I couldn’t tell that from your post. I assumed you were referring to Idaho, as I didn’t go back to your first post?
If it was only to be used for senior execs, then why isn’t there a provision that exempts the lower X% of wages / salaries? The FLSA already classifies workers, so there is precedence for applying different standards.
New Republican motto: “Wreck everything. Let God sort it out”.
State legislators; big lobby-bucks to be made, apparently.
First rule of tech club: don’t go to Idaho looking for a job.
Except the buck stops at a corporation.
Here in Germany, non-compete clauses can only be enforced if the employer can prove a legitimate business interest in having them. They are limited to a maximum of two years and require the employer to compensate the (ex-)employee to the tune of at least half of their gross salary while still employed, for the duration of the non-compete. A non-compete clause is also not enforceable if it would mean undue hardship for the employee, like making it impossible to find another suitable job in their field at all.
You claim such laws are an advantage to the employer. Prove it.
Every study I have ever read about such things reaches the same basic conclusion: a happy worker is a productive worker. From that comes a competitive profitable company.
You have first hand evidence that such agreements result in unhappy workers. An unhappy worker is … well … I suspect you can figure out the rest.
By your statement, I can only suspect that you assume the marginal decrease in a retained employee’s productivity due to unhappiness related to such laws is of a greater negative value than replacing the loss in productivity from said employee who freely leaves (because they are not under risk of legal threat) and the costs related to replacing them. Put another way, does the cost to an employer of making an employee “happy” result in productivity minus happiness cost that is greater than productivity at, say, no cost of happiness…?
While I don’t necessarily disagree with your assumptions longer term (that much should have been evident in my comment), happy worker to productive worker to profitable company paints with a broad brush, ignoring industry, geography, etc. I have first hand evidence that my wife’s former employer in question was very profitable, so much so that the owners sold for a tidy fortune over the long-term. But I’d be happy to read the studies to which you allude, as I have an interest in economics and would be curious to see how the happiness of employees is quantified and sampled.
An agreement not to divulge confidential information or make use of it outside of the workplace is one thing. I have that where I work. I can’t even tell family members confidential details - I can describe generally what type of organizations and people use our product, but I can’t name names of specific customers. That’s fine, it’s reasonable, everyone’s okay with that because it makes sense. It’s confidentiality and professionalism.
However, I don’t have a noncompete. If I left I could go work at the company next door - as long as I do not divulge the company’s secrets, which I wouldn’t do. That’s reasonable. What would not be reasonable would be if the company forced me to agree that if for any reason I lost or left my job, I would become unemployable for a significant part of my peak employable years, and my family would have to spend those years homeless and broke, without healthcare, even if I did nothing wrong. That’s not reasonable.
Companies have 2 choices: either they treat their employees with respect and trust, (remaining ready to follow up with legal action if they violate it), or they treat all employees as guilty from day one and punish them all for a crime (often for years), just in case, regardless of any wrongdoing. I think it’s fine for companies to have confidentiality agreements (and to prosecute if they’re violated), but non-compete agreements are not reasonable in the least in any way*. In my mind, it’s agreeing to a sentence for a crime that has not been committed, and I will not sign one.
Actors have contracts for that purpose. They are paid to represent their employer for a period of time and if their employer wants them to take gardening leave then they have to pay for that.
Especially a publicly traded one. The concept of “shareholder value” creates pressure to behave irrationally. Imagine if you had one of the really egregious noncompetes described here, and your company laid you off to goose the stock price.
I know it’s always a good idea to go to a lawyer in these situations and don’t recommend not doing that, but I would have been very tempted to cut out the middleman and refer them to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram.
Ah well, they’ll have exemptions built-in for those kind of jobs, since skipping between private and public sector is a protected cultural activity.
Big, hairy “Yep!” to that.
John Galt: “And if you don’t like your job, you’re free to go somewhere else…”
Employee #1: “But Mr. Galt, you made me sign a non-compete…”
John Galt: “No one said you have a right to work.”
Employee #1: “I thought there was a ‘Right to Work’ law in our state?”
John Galt: “Yes, there is. I have a right to give you work, under my conditions. Now run along, taker.”
Employee #1: sets factory on fire
