Senators propose near-total ban on worker noncompete agreements

Non-competes in America are insane. The article points out the even fast food restaurants are forcing their fry cooks to sign non-compete contracts, preventing them from flipping burgers at a different chain.

This is basically slavery. People that take these kinds of jobs tend to be vulnerable, tend to lack other options, and these non-competes remove even those few alternatives.

But they're morally wrong at every economic level. If a company wants to control what you do with your time, they should pay you for it. If you aren't actively employed by them, they should have no say in who you are employed by.

Protecting trade secrets is fine, but you don't get to tell an engineer that she can't write software for Amazon just because she also wrote software for Google.

It's in all professions. In school we studied a case in which a man hired every lawyer in his small town for his divorce. Then he quit them all except one. By ABA procedures, lawyers can't represent a party if they have work for the other party on the same case. His wife had to drive long distances to work with a lawyer from another town.

Oh, and there is the case of the cobbler who made high heels for a living. His agreement prevented him from making high heels for anyone. But that was all he knew. The court ruled against the contractual agreement which effectively made it impossible for him to find work.

The logic here is interesting - California doesn't allow noncompetes; Silicon Valley does well, so maybe noncompetes should be outlawed.

In another thread, (about China, I think) I was reading one of the usual earnest defenses of intellectual property. But aren't patents functionally just a form of noncompete? Sure, sure, people always say they are necessary to ensure sufficient investment. But that's the same reason given for worker noncompete agreements.

I can't help thinking maybe before long we will decide they make no more sense than the medieval guild system.

Lets introduce noncompete for companies. If a person who worked at company A is hired by company B then company A is forbidden to compete with company B for 24 months.

Let’s say I am working for a company in a state outside of California, with a non-compete. Can I take a job with a competitor if I move to California? Can the non-compete be enforced? What if I move to California to live, but commute back to the original state to work for the competitor? (Assume I’d pass the teddy bear test for California residency) What if I lived in the original state and commuted to California for the new job?

This seems fine to me. These are rarely enforced but when they are, it ends up being exceedingly expensive and causes significant heart ache.

Interesting that CA/SV is used as an example for how great things go when you don't have noncompetes. Have they forgotten the massive anti-poaching agreement that led to a $1.5 billion settlement?

Outlawing non-competes may be good, but big companies will still find a way to keep people locked in.