I can see non-competes as valuable for people who know business details that would be considered trade secrets (and only for a limited period of time). But for people further down the ladder, this seems like an extremely high burden.
The length and scope of UK non-competes is fairly heavily restricted by the courts and the onus is on the employer to justify the business need. An example like in the article would be unthinkable.
For non compete to work, the affected person has to have specific knowledge to protect (usually client accounts) and the restriction needs to be narrow to specific industry ("software" is not good enough, "Point of Sales software for Bars and Restaurants" probably is), duration needs to be only as short as it needs to be and geographically bounded.
The only time broad non-compete really hold up is for things like sales of a business where the founders are barred from immediately competing with the company they just sold.
Also, many non-competes go totally unenforced. It's rare that a suit over a non-compete is actually filed for low-level employees. In the linked article, the writer wasn't fired because her old company sued her for competing, she was fired simply because the new company found out she had signed a non-compete and presumably wanted to avoid any potential lawsuit-related shenanigans. It's also possible that the company is trying to establish a precedent for voluntary, pro-active enforcement of competitors' non-competes within the industry specifically because they know the courts are unlikely to uphold them. If all the employers just agree not to hire someone who worked at a competitor within the last 2 years, then they don't need to worry about what the court thinks (though they may have to face the DOJ in a wage-fixing scandal, like the computer animation industry has).
Unfortunately, this isn't quite accurate, as shown by the Q&A at the end of the article. Although her previous employer didn't directly sue her, it essentially threatened to sue her. Moreover, the way her new employer found out about her previous non-compete agreement was because her old employer specifically notified them and indicated that she had confidential information. Her new company basically had no choice but to fire her.
Technically, Reuters could have gone to court on her behalf but why bother unless she was some highly sought-after journalist? Intimidating letters are meant to make you weigh your choices carefully. Also, while Law360 didn't literally sue her, it gave every indication that it intended to if she continued at Reuters.
But common sense applies everywhere; if you don't understand it don't sign it, if you don't want to be held by it then don't sign it, if you promise never to enforce it then just take it out of the contract.
I don't know about Canada but in the US this is standard for any contract of any type. The vast majority of contracts I've signed have specific clauses to that effect as well.
Based on personal experience with this in Canada -- there's significant expense and stress involved when you're on the receiving end of a lawsuit from a former employer who had deep pockets and an ax to grind. This is even more true if you've got a mortgage and family.
Even when you're in the right, you're more likely to take the least expensive route to make the suit go away than to fight to the finish.
FWIW I've been under non compete, and a couple of other clauses in all of my previous jobs, but they were never enforced. The legal power of non compete in Denmark is from my observations very weak. So much so, that an employer of mine vaived all clauses after a while since it was a bigger hindrance when hiring people than benefit when people left.
In theory, if trade secrets are already protected, then either the non-compete's are setup as a double protection, or they are only being used to restrict movement. (neither of which seems fair in the economic sense)
Sometimes someone figures out a better solution to a problem than their current employer and they sucessfully go out and implement it. That's not a trade secret... The solution is wholly different.
A good example of the later case can be seen in the healthcare field. The same person architected the Cloverleaf interface engine (which uses TCL as glue language) and then went on to implement the highly popular Corepoint interface engine (which generally tries to avoid the use of programming/scripting language).
Corepoint is eating cloverleaf's lunch in the marketplace, the main similarity between them is what they do, how they do it is very different.
It would still be in the public interest to do away with them at that level.
Obviously, they would only do this in the cases where they are worried that it really could harm their competitive advantage. It would also save companies money in the long run given the number of instances that two companies go to court over things like this.
After you sign something, it's not important if it's reasonable or not: you have to uphold it.
It very much is important, and you don't necessarily have to uphold it. In the vast majority of jurisdictions unreasonable[0] contractual clauses are unenforceable and may even be sanctionable.
[0] what is or is not unreasonable being the primary variable. CNC clauses are generally unreasonable in california (reasonable CNC are related to goodwill and shared businesses) for instance, and in mainland europe they are limited and often must be compensated for their whole duration e.g. in Germany the leaving employee must be paid at least half their gross salary for the whole CNC term (no more than two years) and unreasonable clauses can be invalidated, lest the whole CNC be invalidated.
This is simply not true. Trivial examples include a contract without consideration, or an apartment lease with clauses that attempt to restrict rights granted by local law (very common in NYC). Most non-competes in the state of California are not enforceable as well, even if you agree to it.
That's frankly a ridiculous idea that clearly leads to injustice. Contracts are often between people who are not equals, where one party has less ability to negotiate or walk away. If the weaker party does not have extra protections outside of the contracting process, the stronger party could use its power to abuse them.
This may be your personal moral preference, but it very much is not an accurate reflection of contract law (at least, not in any US jurisdiction.)
You cant sell yourself into slavery for example.