The Federal Trade Commission narrowly voted Tuesday to ban nearly all noncompetes, employment agreements that typically prevent workers from joining competing businesses or launching ones of their own.

  • _sideffect@lemmy.world
    251·
    7 months ago

    Is this what they make you sign that says

    “You can’t join any company that is in the same industry or has the same customers for 2 years after leaving the present company”

    ?

    • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
      5·
      7 months ago

      Lol what. That doesn’t make any sense. Are you supposed to just sit for 2 years doing nothing unless you’re trained on two completely different fields?

    • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
      4·
      7 months ago

      IMO that should be legal, but only if they pay you your full wages for that period of time after you quit or are fired.

      Let’s see how eager they are to really protect those precious company secrets.

      • ours@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        7 months ago

        And by full wage, it’s either the wage you had or the one you could get at the competitor. Otherwise, it’s too easy to lock people in at non-competitive salaries.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
        1·
        7 months ago

        No, that’s not enough to make it legal. I wouldn’t want to be out of work that long and potential employers would wonder how rusty I was

        Yes, compensation needs to be a minimum requirement: isn’t that basic contract law? However contract law also requires that you be in a starting position to bargain or refuse and employees really aren’t: the imbalance of power is too great.

        More importantly, things that block the functions of a free market like this really need to be weighed for societal good, fairness, and market efficiency. This fails all three. It also needs to be narrowly defined, because leaving it to legal action is the definition of failing market efficiency

      • uis@lemm.ee
        1·
        7 months ago

        Why not both? Full wages as damages + EU-style fine of maximum between some amount and some % of global turnover. Or fixed amount + % of global turnover.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
          1·
          7 months ago

          Full wages only makes the victim whole and only in financial terms. Like any other controls on the market, the financial penalty needs to exceed any benefit the corp might get out of it, then let the free market do its thing

    • Silverseren@kbin.social
      3·
      7 months ago

      Or sometimes, like mine, that you can’t quit your contract early to apply for a full colleague position at the company you’re being contracted out to.