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- cross-posted to:
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The Federal Trade Commission narrowly voted Tuesday to ban nearly all noncompetes, employment agreements that typically prevent workers from joining competing businesses or launching ones of their own.
What gets me is how controversial things like this are in the US. Non-competes are antisocial, because they blunt one of the few mechanisms capitalism has to keep employers in check – labor market mobility. One of the things that’s supposed to make capitalism kind of okay is the fact that “if you don’t like it, you can go elsewhere.” Well, if you’re not allowed to start a business or get another job in your line of work for like years after you leave, how the hell are you supposed to actually do that? How does the labor market route around bad employers when workers are literally trapped?
Way I see it, a non-compete is just an employer’s way of telling you they’d keep you trapped in a box in your off-hours if they could.
My country has non-competes in the most sensible way: if you don’t want the employee to go to a competitor, you must pay him what he could earn at the competitor during the duration of the non-compete. Employee quits? He can either join the competitor or you can pay him as long as you want him away from the competitor.
Will employers still put non-applicable non-competes? They sure do and I smile when I see those baseless clauses. Have they tried enforcing them at the “work tribunals” (free for the employee), yes they have and they’ve been laughed off by the judges.
Your country sounds great!
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Is it controversial? The only support I’ve heard for them comes from corps, sleazy executives looking to control their employees. Everyone else is like”meh, clearly unfair and should be illegal but I can’t do anything about it and still have a job”
From the article it’s getting very heavily opposed by the chamber of commerce, so
Maybe not controversial among, like, people, but
Another commenter in this thread noted that the chamber of commerce is just a right wing lobby group, completely separate to the department of commerce. Not sure if you know that already, but I think it basically aligns to the view of the comment you replied to.
Yeah. Mine did too, in that they’re not, like, people. But it’s controversial as far as lawmakers and judges go
I think my point was that the chamber of commerce are not lawmakers or judges, but people representing corporate interests
Gotcha, yeah. I get that. They’re just lobbying the lawmakers and cetera, causing controversy.
Unfortunately, there is a strong implication in American culture that your worth as a human being scales directly with your productivity + net worth. Rich people are intelligent and to be admired
Now take all that stuff that you pointed out as bad, and add on the fact that your healthcare typically comes from your employer too!
You probably don’t even need me to tell you that the right wing media in this country would immediately kick into gear and start programming their base to hate the idea of labor market mobility and the market routing around bad employers. Those people ARE the bad employers!
Before long they’re going to start floating some modern version of an indenture contract for service workers and arguing for the reinstatement of serfdom.
Oh yeah, and they would be going for it right now if they thought they could get away with it.
I mean, how could you not appreciate your employer-provided housing and convenience stores? They’re right next to where you work. You don’t even need a car!
Hence the chamber of commerce threatening legal action.
If businesses can’t abuse the workers, how can they continue to set new profit records every month? Won’t someone think of the poor CEOs?