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Bill Guarantees 50% Salary For Workers Laid Off With Non-Compete (computerworld.com)
Reader dcblogs shares a Computer World report: Non-compete agreements are controversial for many reasons, but what may be worst of all: Even if you are laid off from your job, a non-compete agreement may still apply. California has made non-compete agreements unenforceable, but Massachusetts has not. Some opponents say that's partly the result of lobbying by EMC, which has considerable clout as a major state employer, headquartered in the Boston suburb of Hopkinton. But the pending $67 billion merger of EMC with Dell, and the prospect of merger-related layoffs, is spurring a new attack on non-compete agreements. State lawmakers are considering limiting non-compete agreements to one year, banning them for low-wage workers and for people terminated without cause. The leading legislative proposal will also require an employer to pay at least 50% of the former employer's salary during the period of time the non-compete is in effect. This salary guarantee is called "garden leave" and is in Massachusetts House bill H.4323. In May, the White House released a report about non-compete agreements. It found that 18% of the workforce is now covered by a non-compete agreement, but over the course of a career, some 37% of all workers (PDF) will be subject to them.
Bill who?
Seriously, nobody ever actually checks that you signed your name. Just write 'I don't agree' somewhat legibly.
HR drones are fucking morons, use it.
Consider signing actual name on IRS and 401K documents, but even there no big deal, nobody checks.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
How about non-competes require to pay out at the highest salary the worker has had with the company, with automatic COL raises baked in, over the length of the NDA, minimum two years.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Can't have unions, can't get another job, have to take pay cuts, get randomly laid off, no job security. And now they want to make it so you have to find a whole new type of job? Add a poison pill to keep HR from running amok.
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
That is the stupidest thing I read today. Thank you for making the internet dumber.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Unions caused these non-competes to happen. In an effort to ensure that even the shittiest employees get luxurious lifelong jobs with full pay and benefits, they forced companies to do things like this to stay afloat without unfair competition from other fat cat Union shops. So the next time you get laid off and are forced to sign a non-compete, remember that fat cat Union backed by criminal Democrats like Hillary Clinton are the reason you are suffering.
I'm interested in this because I've never heard those two things connected before. Can you substantiate it please?
The main reason so far as I know why unions exist is that worker productivity has steadily risen since the 1950s while wages have remained stagnant. It's a predictable situation when you have two parties with competing interests, only one of them has a great deal more power, can dictate terms to the other, and generally is holding all the cards. That's where the demand and support for unions comes from. The problems with unions happen when they participate in politics, generally.
Seriously, just ban con-compete clauses nation-wide and void any contracts that include them. They're only ever used abusively on the part of the company that insisted on them as a way to screw over employees in revenge for leaving. And they don't benefit the overall economy. Just look at California. The illegality of non-competes certainly hasn't caused the tech industry here to collapse in on itself.
Apple and Google got in a world of hurt a few years ago for screwing their employees over with an informal no-poaching arrangement. Well... non-compete clauses screw the employee an order of magnitude worse. And we should drop the hammer... equally hard if not harder... on the companies using them.
Imagine all the people...
What if the company cut your salary before firing you?
"Hey Bill, you've had your salary reduced to minimum wage, but don't worry, we're firing you!"
Non-compete for 1 year price: ~$8,000
Or even better:
"Hey bill, we'll give you severance pay of $X, but you have to sign these papers..."
Included in that pile is an agreement to take a lower base salary for your last pay check, which is then used for non-compete salary calculations.
What about health and other benefit coverage during the non-compete time period?
Because that's what happened in states where non-competes are banned?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Non-compete "agreements" are hugely unethical in my opinion. If I work at Google and Apple wants to hire me I should have the right to switch employers without further restrictions. If companies want employees to sit on the sidelines they should either pay them enough to keep them on the payroll or pay them market value to sit on the sidelines. Putting a non-compete in front of an employee as a condition of employment should be illegal and unenforceable anywhere in the US.
By all means, let me just not sign that NCA and miss payments on my house and other obligations to stand against NCAs. How noble! Meanwhile some incompetent schmuck will get the job and the company who would have hired me will never associate with me on any level. And let's not forget, even unenforceable NCAs can be damaging to the employee. Even though I'm in a state where NCAs are considered "unenforceable" I know of at least 1 job offer I did not get because of a 3 year NCA between current employer and potential employer. See, the potential employer plays for the "NCAs are good" team, doesn't want to rock the boat on current contracts, and has no interest in generating legal liabilities because even if the agreement is "unenforceable" if they get served with papers it already costs them money.
My response is tough shit for them.
Any business model that relies on court enforcement of restrictive labor contracts is weak. If you can't provide an incentive good enough to keep your employees at your firm and need to coerce them, you're doing it wrong.
Non-compete agreements were historically an executive clause, designed to protect a company against having a key man quit and then immediately apply a headful of inside knowledge against the former employer. When such a worker separated with a non-compete in effect, he was usually walking off with a tidy stack of equity shares whose value would be diminished if he were to violate the agreement.
So when a company requires a non-compete from a worker who does not in any way benefit from the clause, let's require compensation in the form of a percentage of former salary.
If you think we have a free market in employment you're either not paying attention or you're a shill.