How does it work in practice? Can company write contract saying compensation for non compete is $1/yr?
However, another comment in this thread suggests that the law in question requires the compensation be the same as that of the job itself, which avoids this issue.
If it's the only way to get a job, that's the incentive. If the whole industry does it, or at least the vast majority, then workers don't have an actual choice.
The answer in an environment with a ban on non-competes is “they’d either have legal recourse if someone tried to write them a contract with that term, or the term would be treated as non-enforceable and therefore harmless”.
In the current environment, broadly speaking, most employees wouldn’t have leverage to turn such a term down, and generally don’t.
The most places like McDonalds used to do was to force franchise owners to sign a sort of non-compete to prevent poaching each other's employees. That practice was ended half a decade ago and now even franchise owners don't have to sign non-competes, let alone low-wage employees.
[1] - https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jul/28/joe-biden/...
Can they, though? This fight is moztly not about the spoiled tech sector.
I'm pretty sure they aren't gonna get literally any other job. Sign it or no paycheck.
Also the non-compete clause need to actually protect some company knowledge, a non-compete clause on a bus driver will never be enforceable, regardless on how much extra the company pays.
I personally know only one person with a current non compete, he worked at some niche company, that paid a few tens of thousands of euros for specialization in one specific niche branch and one specific software. He can still work in the same industry, just not with that specific software, and he got 75% of his previous paycheck for (i think) 18 months (the length of the noncompete) + of course the current paycheck he earns in a similar industry (with obviously a different software solution).
The noncompetes are usually a case of having to invest a lot to educate a worker in the first place (again, niche stuff). General stuff (like a php programmer) would never get a noncompete, because the courses are cheap, anyone can learn that themself, and the monthly payouts are more expensive than udemy courses. On the other hand, there is some abuse, where people get employed, especially in the public sector, to get the expensive (cisco, redhat, microsoft,...) certificates paid by the employer and then quit and do freelance work.