What incentive would there be for the employee to sign such an incredibly one sided contract when they could literally go to any other job?
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/...
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.
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.