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Comment by _m96l | Hacker News Reader

Too little, too late. It only protects "minors, students, and low-wage workers". So non-competes against most of us reading this article are still perfectly enforceable.

It's good that they're protecting the weakest class of workers, and those who need this protection the most. Enforcing non-competes against sandwich makers in fast-food chains was probably the most egregious abuse of non-competes ever committed, and a blatant attempt to keep down wages for jobs that already pay barely livable wage.

But these are not the classes of workers who made California's economy boom. It's too bad lawmakers prioritize their short-term funding needs and donors over long-term welfare of their state and its economy.

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>Too little, too late

And a damn shame, too. One of the major enabling factors for Silicon Valley's success has been the unenforcability of non-compete clauses in CA.

MA has a lot going for it (e.g.: MIT, relative proximity with Europe, ...), but seems hell-bent on being the place where only large government contractors can emerge.

>And a damn shame, too

Meh, you reap what you sow and MA has spend decades cultivating incompetent government that's incapable of addressing the needs of the population but perfectly capable of spending our money. I'm sure we look like we have out shit together from far away in SillyValley but I assure you we don't.

>MA has a lot going for it but seems hell-bent on being the place where only large government contractors can emerge.

Large government contractors naturally find it easier to exist under a government that likes to stick its nose in all sorts of things (god forbid it actually stick its nose in things in a way that makes life better for people) than companies that are not specifically optimized to work with government.

From what I can tell from one listing of the text[0], it looks like there are two levels of protection.

The first (what you were discussing) prohibits non-competes completely for certain classes of employees (non-exempt, interns in school, employees terminated without cause or laid off).

The second applies to everyone else and has 8 requirements for a non-compete to be enforceable, including "the agreement includes a garden leave clause or other mutually-agreed upon consideration between the employer and the employee", where the garden clause includes at least 50% of the employee's wage! Of course, "other mutually-agreed upon consideration" could be something much less...

Also interesting: the law looks like it applies to any non-competes signed after October 1 - it starts in 10 days!

EDIT: IANAL

0: https://www.faircompetitionlaw.com/2018/08/06/massachusetts-...

50% salary isn't adequate protection. Imagine taking a 50% salary cut to change jobs. Pretty much pulls the rug under any motivation to do that.

Of course, that's also 50% of base. For the type of well-performing employee against whom non-competes are typically enforced, that means you have to settle for 25% or less of your total comp.

I am not a lawyer either, but from what I've seen in states where compensation is required, non-compete comp is typically 100% of base.

Of course, bonus is still a huge factor.

Often the difference between 0$ and 1$ is vastly more than 1$ and 2$. Companies are happy to setup a non compete for free, but if they need to spend real money then that get's rid of the vast majority of cases.

So anyone already with a job (and agreement) is out-of-luck.

Well, I completely agree that it doesn't go far enough (that's Massachusetts for you...) but it's a start. The article also specifies that laid-off workers are exempt.

I'm not so sure it's a "start". They had a chance to fix it, and they chose to legislate protections that fall short of that.

From a lawmaking perspective, it can be construed as "we looked at the issue, and found low-level employees to be worthy of protection, but nobody else."

> The article also specifies that laid-off workers are exempt.

Even in states where non-competes are generally enforceable, courts are often reluctant to enforce them against laid-off employees.

But guess what? Big corporations have little interest in enforcing non-competes against poorly performing employees.

Take a look at the article I linked elsewhere, to see what type of employees Amazon chooses to selectively target for non-compete violations. They are the well-performing employees who jumped ship for a better opportunity elsewhere. Their goal is to discourage this behavior, so they don't risk losing their best employees or (heavens forbid!) paying them their market value.

I don't know of a single case where they sued a poorly-performing, fired, or laid off employee.

> From a lawmaking perspective, it can be construed as "we looked at the issue, and found low-level employees to be worthy of protection, but nobody else."

I think a political perspective is probably more relevant/accurate which would likely be along the lines of "we looked at the issue, and protecting low-level employees is the most we could do and still get the bill passed"

Obviously large employers have vested interests in protecting non-competes and also have the lobbying budgets to successfully oppose the passage of stronger individual protection from non-competes

I don't know about Amazon, but the earlier articles people posted on the subject did have a lot of people who were let go and then had non-competes enforced against them.

Interesting, do you have a link?

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/business/noncompete-claus...

> Daniel McKinnon, who had been a hairstylist in Norwell, Mass., lost a court battle with his former employer who claimed that Mr. McKinnon had violated the terms of his agreement when he went to work at a nearby salon. Mr. McKinnon said that he did not think the original restriction — to wait at least 12 months before working at any salon in nearby towns — still applied because he had been fired after years of friction with the manager there. Shortly after being fired, he went to work at a nearby salon.

> But a judge issued an injunction ordering him to stop working at his new employer.

> “It was pretty lousy that you would take away someone’s livelihood like that,” said Mr. McKinnon, who for the following year lived off jobless benefits of $300 a week. “I almost lost my truck. I almost lost my apartment. Almost everything came sweeping out from under me.”

Despicable. Seems like MA is one of the worst states as far as non-compete enforcement goes. I remember reading analysis that non-competes would generally be unenforceable against terminated employees even in states that do typically enforce them.

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