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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.
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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...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.
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/
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.
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.
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
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.