NLRB judge declares non-compete clause is an unfair labor practice
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Honestly, I'm starting to see that my company is doing a lot of shady employment things. I guess most companies do.
By the way in Germany employers are legally obliged to provide a reference (Arbeitszeugnis). Most of them that I have seen were too positive and sometimes obviously exaggerated.
In Germany this has turned into a legal climate where only positive reviews are granted, creating a set of tiered shaded meanings inside positive reviews that stand in for ‘unacceptable’ to ‘brilliant’.
At any rate, changing one part of the system, e.g. forcing referrals as in Germany would no doubt change other ways the system works in the US as well.
As far as non-competes, the interesting thing there is I mostly work in science/programming where these are seen as jokes. "Why I can't make a living with this non-compete, non-enforceable" (exception is when they PAY you to not work, which is how it should be). So non-competes are seen as toothless. However I was hanging out with salespeople and they were 100% like "bro, these are no joke, I am banned from talking to my old clients for 1 year, they ARE totally enforceable in sales". And of course if you're starting a new sales job at some competitor, that's a bad look if your hiring arrives alongside a lawsuit, so these guys are properly afraid of non-compete scenarios
Of course, doesn't mean you don't check in with folks you know who have worked with the person at your company and elsewhere.
It doesn't have to be the boss; it could be a co-worker. Generally written, it is hard to get, but almost always available with a phone call after hours.
Asking the person, "Would you rehire this person?" or "Would you like to work with this person?" has a 95% answer rate and says everything.
If the prospect can't connect you with a phone call to one of their co-workers, that tells us what we need to know.
In the US at the corporate level, this would be extremely unusual.
Not to mention how is it even useful? It's the easiest thing in the world to fake by passing along the phone number of a friend claiming to be a co-worker and full of effusive praise for you. It's not like most companies list the phone numbers of their employees somewhere publicly that you could verify.
Decades ago when I was a bartender, it was common practice for your "reference" to be a buddy who would pretend to be the manager at your last restaurant.
There’s a great clip of an Aussie radio show doing a prank like this. They call a random guy up and pretend that they have his number as a reference, and that he’s gonna get a call from some potential employer (who are considering g higher if the prankster). The random guy immediately agrees to say only great things about him and then the actual “reference call” is actually well done.
https://twistedsifter.com/videos/hamish-and-andy-random-job-...
I don't know of any company in the UK that would ever answer such a question, maybe a small shop that hasn't learnt better yet. Companies will provide references that always just say "this person has worked here for X years", no one would ever say anything either positive or negative.
Companies stopped doing these sorts of things because companies got sued. It is very easy to bring a lawsuit, And while it is, perhaps not very easy to win it, someone still can easily have six figures in defending themselves.
If you don’t like that, OK, I don’t either, it is awful. But it is a rational response to a problem that happens.
Oh I understand it. But do you see the big picture here? People should be sueing for them not writing the letter. The NLRB should be taking cases for this as well. This is almost as anticompetitive as non-competes.
Edit: shouldn't have said for not writing the letter, just for a policy forbidding the writing of letters.
This gets awfully close to compelled speech. The only way this could be done is if we remove the right for employees to sue in respect of the content of the letter, which in turn opens up avenues for retaliation.
Written recommendations are bullshit. The ban should be on requesting them.
A ban on requesting them would also work.
Well, now even the omission/refusal to write such a letter might get you sued. A policy that says our managers just don't write such letters is absolutely the safest. 1) the company and its managers don't identify in any way their thoughts on performance in a way that might be found prejudicial; 2) they avoid the risk of a poorly worded recommendation that could be called prejudicial; 3) they avoid having to monitor the standards and risks of such statements across possibly many managers that might write such letters absent such a rule.
Some employers still answer a binary question "Eligible to re-hire? Yes/no" and that tells a lot in one bit of information. Of course some employers are vindictive and they just say no out of spite. Others will not answer anything except confirm dates of employment. Or they provide a good reference on a bad employee just so they leave without having to fire them.
That is what my former manager told me when I left my previous employer. He thought highly of my skills, but couldn't write me a letter due to company policy motivated by these concerns about being sued.
The first amendment is widely interpreted to mean that you can't compel speech. Requiring a company to write recommendation letters would be compelling speech. That would be unconstitutional.
(And it doesn't matter if an individual manager would like to write a letter of recommendation but corporate policy is against it. The manager is paid by the company, would be sharing company information, and is an agent of the company in this regard.)
It would, but that's not what's being discussed.
The accusation is that the companies are restricting speech by saying that managers cannot provide a reference, even if they clearly state in said reference that the views are their own and not that of their employer. Nobody is trying to compel anyone else to provide a reference, the idea is that nobody should be prohibited from it, especially since for long term employees leaving on good terms their manager(s) is/are probably one of their best references.
A manager's evaluation of another employee's performance is internal company information. There's no reason that a company should be compelled to share that information externally.
It doesn't matter if the manager wants to share it, any more than the manager wants to share all the source code the employee has written.
Companies are allowed to determine what gets shared by their current employees, end of story. On the other hand, it is unconstitutional for the government to override that.
There are exceptions for things like public companies that are compelled to release certain data on a quarterly basis in exchange for the benefits of being publicly traded. And plenty of information can be compelled to be shared privately with the government, whether taxes or for health inspections or whatever.
But absolutely not forcing companies to allow their employees to talk publicly about other employees' performance.
This is trivial to solve: both former employer and employee sign the letter, declaring that information in it is full, correct and they have no objections. It would be much harder to sue if you previously agreed that the letter is ok for you.
Edit: and remember, this is to file a suit, not win a defamation suit, which can be difficult. However it is very expensive for an employer to defend itself, easily tens of thousands if not six figures of dollars. How the game is played is a disgruntled ex-employee files a suit and then tries to settle for low tens of thousands of dollars, a portion of which goes to the employment attorney they hired.
when you have current employees talking about former employees on behalf of the company, that is the same thing as the company talking about them.
I don't see it as the same as the company speaking. Things like concerted efforts by the workers to make conditions better are protected and not considered company speech. I guess it's only because they're managers that they don't qualify.
Writing a letter of reference is more and more a risky thing and even in non-employment situations, more people are reluctant to do it.
Most companies don’t constrain an individual employee from providing a recommendation. People might not want to do it, but that’s a different issue.
Corporations that have this policy always tell you that when you check on a prospective employee. “ Our policy is only to give dates of employment and X worked here from…”
It is not a negative when you check on somebody and hear that. I’ve heard it many times. I can hardly take it as a sign of a bad employee when their company simply has a policy not to give references
It some countries they do. A friend sued his former employer because the letter of recommendation he got was not good enough. Strange thing is they agreed and also contacted him to come back working for them. But it depends on the country, in some countries letters of recommendation are very rare, I wrote a couple in more than 20 years, basically every time someone that worked for or with me asked for one.
Companies at least used to ask for references on resumes in the US but I'm not sure how common that is at this point and it was usually co-workers/clients/etc, and not sure how often it was even checked.
Also, no sane employer would be like "well this guy worked at a corporation that doesn't give references, guess I can't hire him." If you think that's how people who hire think, you must not hire. It isn't.
It would be a problem if a corporation gave references to some people and then declined to other times, because then it could be construed as negative, which is exactly why they have that policy.
Letters of recommendations, or even reference phone calls, are something that are widespread in academia and in entry-level service jobs. Like if you want to be a server or bartender, they want to make sure you were actually showing up at your last job and didn't steal money from the register.
They're not really a thing in the corporate world. Your technical expertise, certifications, and dates of employment pretty much speak for themselves. At least in the US.
It is absolutely harder finding a job without references than with references. You also have less leverage for negotiating salary.
"Your technical expertise, certifications, and dates of employment pretty much speak for themselves."
This isn't true at all. Why do interviews if you just make the decision off the resume? Why do code screens or LeetCode?
I have tons of experience and a long tenure, a masters degree, multiple certs, etc yet I'm a low performer with a disability who struggles to even get interviews. But you wouldn't know that by looking at my resume. At one point I was a high performer and a letter of recommendation could have really helped me.
I've never even been asked for references at any technical job in my life. HR departments generally do make some attempt at verifying employment, doing a background check, etc.
So no, in these cases it's not harder. There's no leverage either way.
Because what do reference letters even mean? How do you know the person writing the letter is even telling the truth? This is somebody you've never met and don't know at all. How do you know they don't unfairly hold a grudge against this ex-employee because they took it personally when they quit? Or how do you know they don't just write glowing references for everyone because they know "it's tough out there" and "everyone deserves a second chance"?
I always assumed this is why I've never been asked for references in my professional career, because the companies I applied to knew that references aren't worth the paper they're written on.
The easy fix here is banning requests for references.
Lol ok. You realize I can say the exact same thing to you...
You've offered no facts to support what little you've said. You "suspect" some things and have been told some other things by your manager. I too have been told things by managers and suspect things myself. But I guess because it's your opinion, everyone else's opinion must be wrong.
Huh... TIL
Unlike what other commentators imply, this judgment doesn't legitimize just inventing degrees or qualifications. It's closer to omitting that 2-month job that didn't work out
Like
* Omitting (or denying) that you have done a certain activity (eg., union founding, working with PHP, that only-2-month job because it sucked).
* Claiming (or adding) jobs or degrees that you have not worked at or earned, on your CV (e.g., claiming to have worked for microsoft for 4 years when you didn't).
To me the first one seems clearly okay, but the second one not so much.
Instead, I think it's more reasonable to have exceptions for certain protected activities, such as salting. It's in the same category as sexual orientation for me; employers should not be allowed to ask or make decisions based on it, so if you're asked as an employee, you shouldn't have any obligation to tell the truth.
Omitting entire jobs if the experience isn't particularly relevant (particularly if it was a long time ago) can be OK. I omit that I worked at McDonald's when I was 17 in the 1990s when I am applying for a job in 2024. But if there are gaps in employment history you might be asked about it, especially if it's recent.
Something like fudging employment dates along with omitting some jobs to disguise that you are a job-hopper gets into a much more grey area.
I was surprised to learn that lying about employment history to hide that you are a salter was protected. I get that salting might be protected, but did not expect that lying on an application would be.
Making it so the employer can fire you for lying about the application would practically remove protection for salting. Nobody would hire you for a non-union job if they see you being employed by a union as an organizer in your last job.
The bit that I didn't understand, and that some of the comments here cleared up, is that only lying about the employment pieces that specifically relate to past work as a union organizer are the things that are protected activity.
Missed that this is a jargon word that has a special unrelated meaning here.
My understanding was that you couldn't be penalized for organizing a union per se, but that didn't mean you couldn't be fired for other non-unionization-related reasons.
It seems like this is going a step further: things that could get someone fired in completely union-unrelated situations, are actually protected if done in service of unionization?
If so, where's the line? Can an organizer simply not show up for work and still collect a paycheck? Can they harangue the business' customers because their job requires access to the company's customer list?
I expect a similar line of reasoning applying to this case: The question is about a protected, legal activity which is nonetheless undesirable for certain employers. Asking the question and requiring a truthful answer would undermine the protected, legal activity. Hence an effective remedy is explicitly allowing to lie in the response.
The best remedy to stop such things is a statutory ‘bounty’ for such activity - like the $2500 penalty for California employers for attempting to scare employees with unenforceable non-competes.
I don't follow. It's not permissible but these companies just blatantly ignore the law and ask it anyways? Or it is permissible?
So with very little risk, they do it.
So instead, lying on your answer is not sue-able. Which makes including such questions ineffective.
ETA: Here's the relevant part of the judicial decision in this case:
> None of these employees [who were fired for lying and used to claim precedent in this case] are an appropriate comparator for McClure, who was never accused of stealing, violating traffic laws, or other criminal conduct. And, even if Respondent could show that the other employees were fired just for lying, and not for the underlying serious misconduct, Respondent could not use that to justify firing McClure because they were all accused of lying about conduct that Respondent could lawfully consider in hiring or firing them. In contrast, McClure lied about his history of working for union employers. Because Respondent could not refuse to hire McClure because of his union background, his lie about working for Deem can’t be used to justify firing him.
Being from outside the US, I'd never heard this term before, and actually in my country it's rare that you join a company and aren't given all the documentation by HR about what unions you can join on the first day.
But anyway, when I googled this term, from the wikipedia article:
> The tactic is often discussed in the United States because under US law unions may be prohibited from talking with workers in the workplace and salting is one of the few legal strategies that allow union organizers to talk with workers.
It'd seem them that at least one reason why they might explicitly protect the right for union members to lie about their employment history when trying to join a company for the explicit reason of salting is that they would also be / have been an employee of a union, and disclosing that could well get them deselected from consideration for the role.
Presumably the company will still be responsible for their own due diligence in checking that the potential hire had all the necessary qualifications to legally carry out the work, and might well discover the lie in that process. Presumably they could then also terminate the employee for that reason at that point because they couldn't actually legally carry out the job duties, but equally I'd imagine if they uncovered a lie which could be shown (presumably in court) to be for the purpose of salting, but they were otherwise legally able to perform the work, then the company couldn't fire them.
Historically, the bargain that has been struck is that current employees have substantial protections around union organizing.
However, outside unions have limited rights to directly solicit employees.
That's at the federal level. At the state level, additional pro-union rights may layer on top of that (e.g. in the northeast) or not (e.g. in the southeast).
Additionally, since you mentioned Germany, most US workers do not have a seat at the management table, in contrast to how I believe German companies are typically organized?
We have companies actively looking for an employee to represent the union. Few want the responsibilities. (hours are paid, activities take priority in the schedule) I imagine they most often end up with someone who cares about the company.
https://www.nlrbedge.com/p/wall-street-journal-is-mad-at-wel...
(1) the place of the discussion
(2) the subject matter of the discussion
(3) the nature of the employee’s outburst
(4) whether the outburst was, in any way, provoked by an employer’s unfair labor practice."
You should probably have added this for nuance, so people don't misunderstand you and get the idea that name calling per se is protected.
> things that could get someone fired in completely union-unrelated situations, are actually protected if done in service of unionization?
If you preferentially fire union organizers and preferentially ignore the infractions of non-union-members, then yes.
Importantly, the only detail on the resume that was false was the name of the prior employer. They had accrued the same experience at a union employer instead. This case doesn't allow you to arbitrarily lie on your resume in order to salt, and you can still fire someone for lying if you can reasonably prove that.
Take almost any court case that makes it to the Supreme Court or Federal government action, regardless of the court's makeup, or what party controls the White house or Congress, and ask yourself this question:
What is the pro-business or pro-government outcome of this case or legislation?
Then see how the court ruled or the executive and legislature acted. You will find the majority of the time that the pro-business or pro-government (particularly pro-police) outcome matches what actually happens.
Non-salting example: over a decade ago I omitted an entire year of professional experience as a PHP developer when trying to get hired as a Python engineer, because I didn’t want to get pigeon-holed as “PHP dev who can maintain our crummy legacy PHP codebase nobody wants to touch”.
Anyway it would be extremely problematic if employers were entitled to full and complete honesty from applicants but had no equivalent obligations from their side. If businesses had the choice they’d pick the status quo over mutual transparency.
Going back to Union Salting:
Often times the "salt" is a star employee; they're always on time, never say no to a job, pick up shifts nobody wants to take to ingratiate themselves both to management and their colleagues. They don't ask for raises and never complain to management. Their intention is to organize workers and so they want to be the sort of model employee a manager will keep around.
The reason why this practice is allowed is because its illegal for unions to walk into an establishment and talk directly with employees about organizing while they're "on the clock" and on premise.
If you lie about your work experience, it turns out you can't program Rust, then you can get fired for that.
But if you lie about never having been part of a union before, and it turns out you have been part of a union before, then you can't get fired for that.
If you get fired for being part of a union, then you’re being fired for your political position.
It’s not your fault for lying on the resume, it’s the hiring teams fault for not catching it
Anyone who ever complains about how ridiculous hiring interviews in software development have gotten should be referred to this comment. This is exactly why these absurd practices exist. Because people think they're entitled to lie, and it's your fault if you don't catch them.
Most of what I see people lie about isn't the companies they've worked at, it's the kind of work they do. For instance, when I was looking for a senior engineer I'd get people who said they did all this product architecture work, leading teams in the weeds of building products internal and external. A lot of those people turned out to be actually working on projects by themselves or they didn't actually do any technical work. The latter is pretty easy to identify because if you start asking them nitty gritty standards questions about what they built they'll be completely lost. One woman that stood out like this was part of a ton of professional organizations, and was even being granted some really big title in one of them so I was pretty bullish that I'd found my senior. The last major project she led a team on was an internal REST service, so I figured it'd appropriate for us to workshop a REST API design. Pretty easy stuff to iteratively improve through a conversation especially if you've done it a thousand times. She didn't understand the grammar of REST much less how APIs are grouped. By that point I was starting to realize her role was likely more administrative than technical as a lot of roles at her level at non-tech businesses become. Discovering engineers who say they've led teams who haven't is also pretty easy. Frankly, not many engineers have actually led teams - it's an actual rarity. Of all the things engineers are asked to do day to day, leading other engineers is generally not party to them. I'd generally ask something about how they implement "trust but verify" aka delegating work. Engineers who have worked primarily solo will not know how to break down work so that others can consume it and align to the actual idea. It's something that takes a lot of practice and the answer generally involves a pretext of what certain people's strengths and weaknesses were.
I have no doubt both of these folks genuinely wanted to do what they were applying for. I don't think they'd ever really been given the chance, or worked at the wrong kind of companies for what they wanted to do.
To call it the "fault of the team" is easy, but in reality we have a very disjointed industry with no standard practice for building software, much less as a group.
People are paid to find matching talent. Talent isn’t paid to be truthful on resumes.
That’s the crux of the issue.
Software has wild practices because there’s no agreed upon certification and there’s this myth of 10x developers and managers only want those mythical 10x-ers
Entitled isn't a statement of practicalities or realpolitik; it's a statement of ideals. "Entitlement" as a concept doesn't make sense outside of the context of morality and ethics (or laws). It's not about the way the world is, but about the way the world ought to be.
If I'm an employer trying to spend the limited resources I have to get the right people on my team, barring exceptions I'll get into below, I have a right to be told the truth. You don't have to tell me everything, and if I ask a question you're entitled to say "None of your business". But if I say, "What experience do you have leading a team" and you lie to inflate your experience, and based upon that I hire you, then you have harmed me, you have harmed your future colleagues, you have harmed the other person I might have hired if you'd told the truth, and you have harmed yourself by putting yourself in a situation where you can't perform and can't trust or be trusted. A symmetric set of harms can be sketched out for employers. So no, you absolutely are not entitled to lie to me as a potential employer, and neither are companies entitled to lie to you as a potential employee.
The one exception I'd carve out is if you had the expectation that I'd misuse the truth. If I ask, "Are you pregnant", or "Have you ever been a union organizer", then "yes" could be misused to refuse to hire me (which is against the law), and "none of your business" might be construed as "yes". (Similarly to why, in WWII, I'd answer "No" if Nazis came to me door and asked me I were hiding Jews.)
But if I'm hiring you to lead a team, what I would do with an honest answer to "What is your experience leading a team" is legitimate, not misuse; and you have neither a moral, ethical, nor legal right to lie to me in your response.
Perhaps you really meant that practically speaking, below a certain level, there's no way to police minor "misrepresentations" from one side to the other. But just because it's possible to do it and get away with it doesn't make it right; and the fact that lots of people are causing harm to others by misrepresenting themselves doesn't negate the harm that you're causing when you do it too.
This is broadly similar in principle to laws like those in many places allowing one to not disclose spent criminal convictions.
So, all you have to do to completely lie on your resume and keep employed, is pretend to be union organizing?
You can lie about union organizing because an employer is not allowed to use whether or not you are a union organizer when making hiring or firing decisions.
If you lie about something that the employer is allowed to use in making those decisions they can fire you.
You can lie about your union involvement. You can't make up qualifications you don't have.
Now, not mentioning a job in the past, or some details of it, are a different case.
It sucks if you have to be allowed to just make up work experience, but the root of the problem is the power imbalance between employers and employees, and well, that's what's unions are trying to address.
I would be against people making up experience, but replacing one company's name for another might be OK, if the companies are of roughly similar caliber (no saying you worked at Google when you were an IT for a shop).
I work in financial services so am often covered by these clauses. Firstly, it seems insane that unpaid non-competes are legal at all, to start with. Also, seeing them applied to very junior level and even hourly paid roles is overly onerous.
While my industry pays your base salary during your "garden leave" even this can be misleading in more senior roles where 50% or more of your compensation is bonus, plus some firms cut your healthcare coverage on resignation as well. Some companies have also extended the terms as long as 18 months or longer.
Further, I have been under non-solicitations with terms as long as 5 years which is frankly insane.
So all that is to say the free market is not exactly working here, and seeing some legal guardrails put in place would be good - pay required, terms limited, benefits defined, etc.
They're not. I mean they're legal in that you can write one and ask someone to sign it. But good luck getting it enforced!
I went to a college where people typically went on to finance roles and strategy consulting. I myself worked at Bain for a few months before deciding it was not for me.
Our corporate law professor told us the same thing. She was head general counsel at an aerospace company. She said ignore all non-competes and don't accept payment for them.
If there's no payment in a contract, there's no consideration. A non-compete has to be signed upon resignation. So just don't take the resignation bonus.
Moreover, it doesn't really matter because no one is going to put someone on the government dole in order to enforce a non-compete. It's safe to ignore in almost all circumstances. Why would a state possibly take on yet another unemployment figure in order to protect a private company's interest? They want the tax money.
Non-solicitation is different.
IANAL, but take that as you will. I've followed this advice religiously and nothing happens. Most companies will be weirded out when you don't take the resignation bonus, but as long as no money changes hands, they have no power over you.
Also, most I've seen were required to be signed when employment began, not when employment ended.
Going back to your list. Look at the 'protected activities'. Simply being employed in the field is rarely one of them. Yes, you can't take clients or poach employees. Some might require repayment for training, etc. But no one can make you unemployed and destitute for it. Why would any state want that?
The key word in many of the tables is 'not against public policy', which is what it means when states don't want people to start taking welfare when not able to work.
That being said I am glad states are now pre-emptively fining businesses that attempt to use these. It shouldn't be up to employees ignoring what they presume to be valid contracts.
A problem is that if you are moving within an industry that enforces non-competes they all generally respect each others for fear of invalidating their own. They also tend to know the terms of each others contracts as well so you can't exactly bluff your way through.
So your new prospective employer will not do anything that is seen as soliciting you to break the prior contract.
Also at the low end it works especially well because you won't take the risk of court / having to hire a lawyer.
Non-compete, as in preventing people from selling their labour, a violation of free market? Or is stopping people from agreeing to non-competes, a violation of free market?
Is allowing a man to sell himself into slavery free market, or is banning such practice something that helps to ensure the market stays free?
The more American idea of a free market is a kind of natural law of the jungle, where the strongest wins.
The more European idea of free market is that it can only exist with rigorous protections and watchful eye of a government
Non-competes are a feature of monopsony because in a given industry all the buyers of labor enforce them. This is a concept related to monopoly, but on the demand rather than supply side. Even bad old USA takes (an increasing) hard line on monopolies.
Long enough to reset, not worry too much about health coverage, and if timed right.. not miss out on a bonus cycle. It's also short enough that you can interview and get a job offer from a company willing to wait for you. Often you can negotiate a signing bonus at the new shop to make up for compensation you may lose due to deferral or bonus cycle.
The firms trying to force 18 month terms are also some of the highest turnover shops. Arguably you'd need to demand a 50-75% bump to take the role since on the way out the door you are going to miss out on 1-2 bonus cycles. The term is so long you likely need to quit before finding a new job too, and then kick off interviewing in the last 6 months.
People would either be part of a two-income household or wait for their stock to vest, but for many years they tolerated it fine.
The next step in this case is for a 3-member panel of the NLRB (a 5 member board appointed by the President, currently with 4 members) to decide whether to accept the proposed ruling of the ALJ or to substitute their own opinion of how the case should come out.
Orders of the NLRB are not self-executing, so parties can appeal an adverse judgement to the Circuit of Appeals of their choice and the NLRB can cross-petition for enforcement of their decision. The Federal courts have final say over questions of law like “are non competes a violation of labor law”.
The entire process takes several years to play out.
There's an open controversy about how much deference the Article I courts in administrative agencies are owed by Article III courts, arising mostly from Chevron v NRDC. That decision requires Article III courts to defer to Article I courts' interpretations of their statutes and even their administrative rules except in extreme circumstances. Several justices on the Supreme Court find Chevron deference problematic, but it currently is the law of the land.
It's not even sort of the beginning. The conservative stance on the role of the Supreme Court has been pretty clear for a long time and this court has been ruling that way for a few years now.
Their theory is that Congress makes the laws, the Executive branch enforces them, and the Judicial branch interprets. The precedent that they've overturned has consistently been in line with this logic: they've said over and over again that if America wants a law then Congress should create it, rather than relying on executive rulemaking that gets overturned every time an administration changes or on unelected judges legislating from the bench.
Whether or not you agree with them on specific issues, I think we can all agree that the current status quo where worker rights take dramatic swings every time a new party takes control of the presidency is a ridiculous situation that needs to be fixed. I want a nation of laws, not a nation of administrative rules that have a 4-year shelf life.
To some extent this already has happened, just at the State level, and I think a patchwork of stable state laws is still better than a bunch of very short-lived rules at the federal level.
Edit: Make that at least three times: they've also capped the civil service which has just caused an explosion in contractors.
Legislating from the bench is better than the administrative rulemaking in that it's at least generally more stable, but I do think that the conservative justices have a point that the actual laws should be more directly accountable to the people than the Supreme Court is.
Basically, we should be able to change the laws, but it shouldn't be as simple as winning a single national election because that makes things too unstable.
The best systems in practice seem to be proportional-representation parliamentary ones. They generally result in coalitions of multiple generally centrist parties so things don’t change too abruptly, but passing new laws is at least possible. Of course some parties refuse to cooperate with each other: in Germany for example no mainstream party will work with the right-wing AFD, and right-leaning mainstream parties additionally refuse to work with the left-wing Die Linke (legal successor to the East German ruling party although substantially more moderate nowadays). However this doesn’t stop the big mainstream parties from working together to an extent that would be unimaginable in the U.S.
It’s indeed probably impossible to fix in the U.S. because it’s so hard to amend the constitution in such a radical way.
When there are two major parties each representing say ~45% of the population, proportional-representation gives the left over swing voters equal power does it not? So perhaps ~6% of swing voters can have as much influence as ~45% of voters? Does this not happen in practice? Consider Israeli proportional-representation system for example. The Israeli % numbers are different but I have the impression they struggle with this problem due to proportional-representation.
There are ten factions represented in the Knesset (Israeli parliament) and the biggest one (Likud, Netanyahu's party) got 23% of the vote in the last election.
It's true that fringe parties can have outsized influence in a proportional system, but the US system suffers from the opposite problem: fringe elements can take over one of the major parties, which seems to be well on its way to happening with the Republicans now.
The IRS exemptions for fake Christian seemingly organizations: do you think the court is going to defer to the IRS’s interpretation of the 3 word “exclusively for religious” part of the 501(c)(3) if it denies something Christian tax exemption? No. They’re going to see if that woman’s husband is a member of the Federalist Society, and if he is, then her bullshit charity that pays her salary will maintain tax exemption. My dude, Clarence Thomas’s wife is a beneficiary of deference on 501(c)(3).
They like administrative deference when it suits them. Don’t try to make this about some sincere judicial opinion that has some legitimacy.
Everyone says this about their opposition. Obviously you know that it's not true about the liberals—you know that they mean what they say. So when a conservative says that liberals are insincere and really have a hidden agenda you know that's nonsense.
Turns out that that the same thing is also true on the conservative side. They generally really do believe what they say. Donald Trump is a notable exception, but even many of his supporters are sincere and are either stupidly taken in or see him as a means to a good end.
Employee must stay away from work during the notice period, while still remaining on the payroll. 6 or 12 month garden leave is common in financial sector.
Noncompetes fit this bill. They've been weaponized by private equity to medical practices. A PE firm will come along and buy up all the medical practices in an area. It's hard to resist that large buyout offer. The staff will then be put on noncompetes that essentially prevent them from practising in their area at all if they leave.
This problem has gotten so bad that even places like Florida are seeking to ban medical noncompetes [3].
If you've wondered why your vet bills have gotten so large, well it's the same playbook [4].
Restraint on trade (such as noncopetes) is used to suppress wages and jack up prices for absolutely nobody's benefit other than the PE fund's investors. Absolutely no value is being created here so I'm glad to see the NLRB, the FTC and yes, even Florida take action here.
I've previously thought that noncompetes may make sense in very limited circumstances and, if so, companies should have to pay through the nose. Example: when you quit the company has a one-time option to exercise that noncompete. If they do, they have to pay you out for the entire term. That payout? Take your highest earning year in the last 10 years. Double it. That's how much you have to be paid per year. Then we'll see how badly companies really need noncompetes.
Even then I think I'd be just as happy if they were entirely illegal.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
[3]: https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2024/02/flori...
[4]: https://stateline.org/2024/03/29/vets-fret-as-private-equity...
Want someone to not work for a competitor until their secret knowledge is out of date? Pay them gardening leave.
Ie, they wanted 1 month, but lobbyists wanted 6 months, legislators pushed back, and everyone compromised at 3.
They must be specific and unambiguous.
Edit: Here ya go Walter, I guess your compiler skills are better than your google skills. Several cases here were in favor of the business.
https://www.nlrb.gov/cases-decisions/decisions/notable-board...
If you want to point to a decision in particular, I'll take a look at it.
> you made a stupid comment meant to insinuate something sinister
It's a fair question.
All you needed to do was cite one. Please do.
Since you clearly have not bothered to read them, the guidelines are at the bottom of the site, or maybe try googling it.
Asking leading questions is always put forth as “innocent” but it never is with these types of people.
I don’t even know why I’m defending myself to you, I’m comfortable with what I’ve written here today. If dang thinks it’s rude he can ban my comments.
I did read the first two, but understood neither, because they were in legalese. I also googled using my exact question, and none of the results were anything but generic articles about the NLRB.
> Asking leading questions is always put forth as “innocent”
I didn't say it was "innocent", please don't make up quotes and put them in my mouth. I said it was a "fair" question. And it is.
Seems contradictory. Maybe this is a cue to think honestly about why you feel compelled to defend yourself.
There often seems to be an assumption that non-competes are the norm everywhere else and, while they certainly exist (and some firms/industries are notorious for enforcing them) that just isn't the case anything like universally in my experience.