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Non-Competes Might Mean Loss Of Benefits
Skapare writes "WashTech is running a story about how having a non-compete agreement could cause loss of unemployment benefits. While non-compete agreements are addressed in unemployment benefits policies, it seems you still get shafted because it forces you to accept any employment outside your field, making it much harder to find work in your field. Personally, I think the employers with whom you have a non-compete agreement should be the ones paying you unemployment benefits."
Want to put non-competitive clause in my contract? Fine, but then I want you to pay me salary during the perioid.
It has to be a balance in the system.
If he didn't want one before, I'm sure the guy would like a full-time gig. I've always been uneasy with contracting companies. It has never seemed like a good deal to me. I've been fortunate that I've been able to find full time employment. For me, a contracting company would be a last choice. They demand too much and provide too little in return.
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
Personally, I think the employers with whom you have a non-compete agreement should be the ones paying you unemployment benefits
They may not be paying unemployment benefits, but they *do* provide compensation for the non-compete agreement. In the case of slave traders like these, the compensation is in the form of getting a job in the first place; in the case of other companies, people signing non-compete agreements are generally paid more than they would receive at a job which did not require such an agreement.
If you don't like the terms of employment offered, *don't accept them*.
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I am pretty sure it is time for me to seriously consider putting the IT scum sector behind me for good. I'm sure there is more career satisfaction in being a garbage man. At least people appreciate your efforts ;-)
Non-competes are simple anti-trust.
The truest sign U.S. government is controlled by corporate interests rather than people's interests is the allowance for non-compete clauses, among other anti-employee self-determination politics.
...is higher unemployment insurance rates.
If a company has an employee sign a non-compete agreement, they are effectively limiting that employee's future prospects, and placing a heavier load on the unemployment insurer. Therefore the insurance company should monitor what non-compete agreements the company uses and charge the company accordingly.
As to Mr. Robb's dilemma, he did not receive a valid work offer (because of the agreement he was essentially "not qualified" for the job anyway) and therefore should not have needed to report the offer to the insurer.
Don't ever become a contractor. Although I have non-compete agreements but I'm not a contractor.
Ah, the business world. Where freedom doesn't ring.
One of the nice things about living in Nebraska.
Non-competes cannot keep you from working in the field, only from working directly for a competitor, provided you're working on *exactly* the same type of project.
As a widget developer, You can work for a competitor that develops gadgets, but not widgets.
Unemployment cannot deny you benifits as long as you make the required 2 contacts per week are actually "available" to work, and register with the state employment agency.
They *cannot* force you to accept employment for which you are not skilled.
Any fool can work on a garbage route(I've actually done it) but if it's not something you've *trained* for, or have prior experience in, they can't make you accept work in that field.
I was out of work for two months, and ran throuh all my computer related employments contacts within the first two weeks. On all my apps for crap jobs I was qualified for (like the garbage route) I stated I expected salary comensurate with my experience. I was making 36K when I got laid off, so that's what I wanted to work at the local Kwik Shop.
Just so you understand I wasn't milking the system, believe me I'd much rather work, all of the "prviously skilled" positions I was looking at all wanted my computer skills in addition to my "job related" skills. I'll work on the garbage route for $8.00 an hour, sure. You want me to fix your computers also? I get paid for those skills, and $8.00 an hour doesn't begin to cover it.
Just once, I'd like it if someone called me "Sir".
Without adding, "You're creating a scene."
I remember hearing a lecture on this very topic a couple of years ago. The main point was that as you proceeded westward across the U.S., the non-competes became less enforcable, until California non-competes are virtual oxymorons (Google the term).
I think that the idea of a non-compete is an idea that's going to fade away; it justn't seem intellectually tenable to me. It's certainly reasonable for a company to protect its trade secrets and intellectual property (don't mean to troll here), but labor mobility is a force of public interest (supports wages and other positive economic effects).
I'm what most people would consider a radical free marketer, but even I realize that certain agreements foul up the system by their very nature. For example, I should theoretically support the right of a worker to sell himself into slavery; after all, if it is his very own freedom, is it not his own freedom to sell? Obviously, this gums up the works very quickly and destroys the system. Kind of like Hofstader's self-destroying record - record player combo. Anyhow, I think non-competes may be a less extreme version of this.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
This article is so unbelieveably biased that I didn't even have to look at the source to realize that it was Union rag.
....Bethanie....
Note how it starts out by getting you all riled up about this poor guy's plight -- his role as the beleaguered sole supporter of his special-needs daughter and the hopelessness conundrum proposed by his circumstances. But if you read it thoroughly, you also see that he was completely vindicated by Excell, the Washington State Employment Security Department, and later, by Volt.
And then, of course, the article launches into the obligatory attack on Microsoft and its evil feudalistic business practices, because who doesn't hate MS, right?
Listen up, people. We live in a FREE country. You don't HAVE to sign a contract with an employment agency if you don't want to, and before you do, you'd sure as hell better read the fine print before you sign up! If they aren't making you a decent offer, then move on to the next agency!! Evaluate them as carefully as you would a prospective employer -- because, in effect, that is what they are.
The knowledge you have and the skills you can leverage are your currency in today's economy. When you accept a job or a contract with someone, it's because you are willing to provide what you know in exchange for what they offer you.
These businesses won't STAY in business for long if they can't recruit quality talent. Hell, if you're good enough, you can negotiate the damn non-compete out of your OWN contract!
Next time you read an article like this -- remember: Always consider the source!
Actually, things like welfare and universal health coverage are good for the economy. The former does things like flatten out the business cycle by increasing spending counter-cyclicly (to people who will spend all the money on goods and services instead of saving it) and the latter reduces costs to the overall economy by improving health standards (it's cheaper to prevent illness than cure it)
But more importantly, they're a sign of a civilised society.
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Well the guy was a major asshole and abusive. I was fired or quit depending on who you talk to only on the third day. Since they offered me a shitty substandard 7/hr for a tech job I was not real excited about it anyway.
I found another employer who I liked a month later that paid almost twice as much! No silly contract either. No lawsuits, nata.
Most employers that do this are either jerks, greedy, or under extreme financial pressure and you have to ask yourself, "do you really want to work for them"?
I read alot of comments here stating if somebody does not the clause then they should not take it. However under economic situations that may not be possible. I would also advise others to leave the field.
After all the industry is replacing you with Indians, putting in slimy clauses, treating you like property, lobbiny congress to increase H1b1 visa's to brind down your demand to blue colar wages, etc! The other white collar industry does not have this bullcrap. Show them what you think. I for one will not put up with it.
http://saveie6.com/
Wow, that's pretty.. interesting.
I did a contract with Volt before. That company is basically resume stain. They did absolutely *nothing* to help me find another job after my contract ran out. Not a damn thing.
Contracting sucks. It really does. Companies like Spherion and Volt wind up being sweatshop employers. Ugh.
My wife went straight from college to mothering, and has never worked, so has few job skills. The company for whom I work (who shall remain nameless) just sold my position to a contracting company, with one weeks' notice. Despite their company policy, they are not giving me any severance whatsoever if I don't take the job with the contractors. The contractors *require* a two-year NCA, and stated unequivocally that anyone who would not sign would lose their job immediately. The contracting company is *huge*, and it is quite likely that any potential job I get may conceivably compete with them somehow.
Did I mention that there aren't really any jobs out there right now? Do you think I'm in a position to fight the contract? No, I signed, and I will try to tough it out as best I can. If I have to leave (or get fired) from the contractor, I will get a new job as quietly as I can, not tell my former boss, and hope they don't notice.
The idea that everyone has free choice in signing contracts is foolish. The bottom line is that a disproportionate amount of power is placed in the hands of employers during hard economic times. They should not be able to do anything they chose because of that. The solution you propose -- which as I read it is pure Laissez-faire -- was more or less tried in the 19th century. It resulted in horrible abuses, and horrible conditions for working people. It resulted in the unlimited importation of cheap labor from foreign countries (every read "The Jungle"?) It resulted in 60 hour work-weeks for 12-year-old kids. All this was done as good examples of "free enterprise". It was in reaction to these conditions that labor unions were formed and fair labor practices laws were passed.
It is no coincidence that these abuses started at a time of great economic growth (the Industrial Revolution.) The laissez-faire approach might work in a smaller economy. However, the creation of shared-stock companies has the effect of watering down the process of making ethical decisions so that no one feels personally responsible. Instead, everyone operates on a scheme of plausible deniability. It is correct and appropriate in such cases for the government -- who created the shared stock company as a separate persona in its own right in the first place -- to take action to ensure just and moral practices.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Please think of this next Christmas when you're watching the Corporate News.
The NDA/NCA that I signed stated that any computer work I do while in company employ belonged to the company, not to me. There are a couple of ramifications to this.
I am effectivly barred from contributing to any open source product while with my current employer. The code I write is not my own, therefore I cannot contribute it to an open source project. Even contributing a cool idea that I may have up with could cause that project trouble in the long run.
I have absolutely ZERO motivation to work on any side projects at home. Why should I? The second I put pen to paper and sketch out a design it belongs to someone else. Knowing that any personal projects didn't really belong to me just sticks in my craw and saps any and all motivation.
If Grandma calls me in the evening with a computer question I have to bill her for the answer. Answering her question would be performing computer support work, and my labor would, therefore, belong to the company, not to me.
California is a Right to Work state. I live in California, I know the agreement is bullshit, but I won't sign such an agreement. If I allow myself to be intimidated by my employer right from the start, then I'm setting a dangerous precedent for the rest of the relationship.
Technically, what you did by changing the contract was give them a counter offer which they accepted. Changing any terms of the contract handing you invalidates that contract. They more than likely would have had some kind of grounds to stand of if they chose to not hire you on the basis of you changing that one section. However, its a moot point since they did hire you anyway. They accepted your terms and your counter offer.
Same thing happened to my husband. He was at his company for two years. They came out with this non compete in their employee manual which everybody had to sign. Besides him not being able to go to another ISP anytime soon, his spouse couldn't work for a competitor either. So essentially, they limit who I can work for as well... He didn't want to sign it, but they were going to blacklist anybody who didn't. We both know that was intimidation and he'd have grounds to fight... neither of us have any ability to afford a lawyer though.
This is what Microsoft means when they clamor for "free markets and competition": high-tech feudalism and indentured servitude.
If Microsoft were replaced with a dozen or so smaller companies that were in competition with each other, they couldn't afford to do this sort of thing to their workers.
You can burn down my house, that will be good for the economy, but it certainly won't be good for me.
We are talking about civilized societies here. Personally, the misfit in me partially desires burning people like you alive, rather than your house. It doesn't mean such an action would be civilized.
We can have anarchy, or we can have civilization. The desire of the few which are contrary to civilization are deservingly suppressed.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
You chose to have a wife not work. You chose to have four kids. You chose to have a car that needed car payments. You chose not to buy appreciable assets such as an apartment or a house. And you chose not to leave below your means.
Those were all choices. You didn't need to have kids right away. You didn't need to have your wife stay at home right from day one. And you didn't need to pay for a car that cost more than $2,500.
In any case, please spare me your anarchy vs. civilization speech. "Civilized societies" can destroy property as much as anarchists can. They just do it for the so-called good of the economy.
Pay me X months of severance pay and I promise not to compete for X months. Simple.
My wife (in New Zealand) works for a language school and has a clause in her contract not to start up another language school with-in two years within 200km of her current employer. This clause is being broken left right and centre in the language school industry in Christchurch.
I think it sux. It probably won't matter soon with SARS threatening the industry, but I'll certainly advise her not to sign such a contract again.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
No, it won't be good for either you or the economy. This is the broken window fallacy which says that somebody going around throwing rocks through windows helps the economy by increasing the business of window repairmen. The flaw is that it ignores that the money spent on repairs would otherwise have been put to more productive uses.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
that's how it works in France.
You signed a non-compete agreement, have been fired/resigned. You can look for a job anywhere, if you land one, you must tell your former employer, who will then decide if he wants to enforce the non-compete part of your contract. If he does, he has to pay for your salaries for the period he prevents you to work.
i had a sig, once..
Duh retard.
Universal healthcare is good for me a worker.
Universal healthcare is bad for him, CEO of insurance company.
Let's see now, who's interests should i vote to protect? gee, duh i donnoo...me stupid american...i know, i'll vote to help the CEO!
This is 'good for the economy' in the same way that eating a big bag of sugar is good for your body
That's hardly a good analogy. Welfare is consistent but will grow somewhat as unemployment grows. What you are describing actually is more like what central banks do to flatten the business cycle: they reduce interest rates and increase liquidity, giving the economy exactly that sugar rush, then have to do the opposite if the stimulus goes too far.
Again untrue. In fact it does exactly the opposite. By decoupling the decision to consume from the obligation to pay, these schemes explicitly destroy the mechanisms which previously kept cost low and quality high, and have resulted in skyrocketing health care costs.
Right. People get sick just to cash in on the health system. Seeing the doctor too often is much better than not enough. And the last time I looked, places like the US had skyrocketing health costs. Government health systems control health costs because the industry essentially has one customer - the government. The government sets how much it will pay for services and the doctors can like it or go without customers.
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Someone dies, and the government wants money. Sounds like a "Death Tax" to me.
Nah. Someone dies, the money comes in to you (who didn't die). Comes in. In come. Sounds like a reasonable tax to me.
So $250k that what anymore? A house, half of a house?
Where I live it's two houses. You, by your own voluntary choice, want a house in an area where houses are expensive, whose fault is that?
*It's* *already* *had* *it's* *taxes* *paid* *on* *it*
*Everything* has already had taxes paid on it. Many times. It's like oxygen. The O2 you breathe in today, somebody breathed in 2000 years ago. And by dinosaurs before that. The two bucks I spend for a beer, I already paid taxes on, should that mean the bar is tax exempt? Some people don't realize, you gotta pay for things somehow. You want to invade third-world countries, it costs money (you can't always steal it from their oil). You want to lock up people who smoke dope, it costs money. You want to give big subsidies to farmers, defense contractors, shopping mall developers, it costs money. You want star wars missle shields, it costs money. You want to hire border guards, it costs money. You want to build roads, it costs money. Why shouldn't you be taxed? We gotta pay for that crap somehow, we don't have all the kinks out of perpetual motion yet.
I know this won't get read, but I have to weigh in with this point that seems overlooked: NCAs are simply an artificial method to keep wages down. After all, you wouldn't generally worry about someone jumping ship if you were willing to pay them what someone else was; the NCA eliminates the conversation where the employee asks for a raise on the grounds he has an offer elsewhere. Hell, it eliminates the "offer elsewhere" entirely.
Hmmm, it also seems to interfere with the free market by eliminating currently employed people from the potential labor pool. If widely adopted, the standard NCA would effectively bring about a new Soviet-style state where no one could ever leave their jobs. But I guess theoretically you could still choose your first (and only) job. Sweet!
Play the "corportae responsibility" trump card. Let them know that you are willing to sign the non-compete if-and-only-if they take responsibility for your unemployability while it is in force (like establishing a nice severence package *NOW*).. "If you have the power and desire to take away my livelyhood for your corporate gain for the time given, you will take responsibility for my livelihood until that period is over" .. or you can give me a nice lump sum.
meh
All I stated was that I believe you should uphold your end of a contract.
When almost all employees require you to sign obnoxious contracts simply to survive then that ethic is bullshit. I for one am not going to work in a McDonalds simple because unavoidable non-competes leave no other option. You seem to think there is choice in this matter for techies. For the most part, there isn't. Shame on the parent poster for asserting his right to earn a living.
The whole "some people will make it big" argument is pointless. Yes, some people will make it big. To be precise, rather few people will make it big. Even fewer will make it big by doing something useful. And sure, those people will arguably deserve to be better off than most other people. But how much? Enough to create third-world style income and wealth disparities? The point is that *everyone* can't make it big. And the people who do make it big depend on the existence of all the ones who don't. Someone has to do the actual work. Work is useful. The people who didn't make it big are not worthless. And in a system which is arranged to keep employment less than full for purposes of "marketplace discipline", even unemployment is useful. Or, if it isn't, it's at least required--deliberately built in. When unemployment gets too low, and the economy is considered to be "overheating" (which is to say, people might start demanding decent wages) then interest rates get pumped up to strangle the problem. Meanwhile, on an individual firm basis we know perfectly well that layoffs are essentially random nowadays. You can be a good worker who put in a good, and even innovative, day's work for 25 years and you're gone tomorrow--quick exit interview and led out by security. Given that, blaming the unemployed people for being unemployed, or people who work at boring, backbreaking jobs for working at them, is a bit beside the point. What would we do if they stopped? We'd find out what they mean when they say "Any urban area is 24 hours away from barbarism". If we're going to have structural unemployment, which *is* an economic choice, we have something of a duty to the people we have structurally unemployed. And if we're going to have a society that runs on hard work, we should pay decent wages to the people who do it. This mythology that the only people creating value are "entrepreneurs" like the folks who ran Enron is dangerous nonsense.
Given the current "glut" of tech workers, companies can do anything they like and insist that you sign virtually any document. If you don't like it...next tech applicant please... All of us who live in the Peoples Republic of Amerika know that most court cases are won based on financial resources expended. If you cannot take on a corporation, give it up. For example, I know a number of tech workers who were fired right after they turned 50. They were absolutly forced to sign a myriad of "agreements" to get their pitance. One person told me that "the company" assured them that they would lose their house and savings before they ever had their day in court if they did not like it. The law in Amerika is by and for the wealthy like our politicians. O.J. - need I say more.