Have the courts ever addressed the conflict between "employment at will" and this?
On side, we get rid of you when and how we please...
But you can't go get another job because "slave master has property interest in you"
It seems like "master" mentality is still very strong within elites.
Judges aren't interested in being consistent, it's just about oppressing you and upholding capital.
Yes it does appear to be that way. Even when Congress does a good thing, it gets stalled or shut down.
Can't rely on elected officials to deliver proper laws, executive appears to be useless and judges will stop any progress.
How many generations of this now 2 or 3?
How many generations of this now 2 or 3?
It's been continuous since colonial times. It's an unbroken thread from "indentured servitude" and "slavery," to "sharecropping" and "vagrancy"/"convict leasing," to "non-compete agreements" and prison labor being managed by prisons directly (instead of having inmates leased out).
most people aint ready for this one lol
To be fair, I wasn't entirely happy with my comment either. There was something missing, and I just figured out what it was.
Along with "sharecropping" I should've mentioned "sweatshops," and along with "non-compete agreements" I should've mentioned anti-union laws like "right-to-work" and "at-will employment."
sets a dangerous precedent where the government knows better than the markets
Wtf. You could say this about literally any law. Outlawing murder-for-hire sets a dangerous precedent where the government knows better than the markets. Making people pay income tax sets a dangerous precedent where the government knows better than the markets. Speed limits set a dangerous precedent where the government knows better than the markets. What a terrible argument.
No kidding. Even regular staunch capitalists recognize that regulation is sometimes necessary. Regulation against anti-competitive practices exists because a market left to its own devices will devolve into monopolies that will be much less efficient than a competitive market. Non-competes are just employers establishing monopolies over their workforce.
a market left to its own devices will devolve into monopolies
I would posit it devolves into either slavery or serfdom based on historical records. We all started "in free market" lol
Even regular staunch capitalists recognize that regulation is sometimes necessary.
Most people can't the differentiate between capitalism and free market on conceptual level
The thing is that the government absolutely knows better than the markets.
Left unchecked, markets would bring back slavery.
Is there any legal argument besides this?
This sounds like a personal opinion lol
It's the Chamber of Commerce statement, so it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the law. It is just personal opinion.
Yes.
Under employment laws you can quit basically at any time with given notice and you can apply to any job no matter who you are or what you did before. The non compete clauses are always part of the employment contract. Usually, what's in the contract is binding, but: there's things that might be voided upon examination. Here things like consideration and unconscionability come into play. I assume this clause would be ruled unconscionable against employment laws, therefore the clause is basically removed from contracts after the fact and precedent allows for it to be voided upon future use.
employment laws > contract law. That's all it boils down to I assume, just what weighs more.
A lot of European countries allow only very limited non compete clauses or none at all. Moving in that direction is not really without precedent, so there's your legal argument.
Also obligatory IANAL, if you think I'm wrong and you got sources, please correct me. I wanna learn what I don't know.
I think we are talking about two different things. I was mainly asking for legal reason for the judge's injunction, looks like it is not a ruling but a stall tho.
She will rule later. That's what I was getting, what is the reason to disagree for the judge here.
I think you described how employment law works correctly though. non compete clause is hard to enforce in many places and for most jobs maybe save of some super red states.
But I also don't think that is their primary goal either, I would posit the goal is to "send a message" or "chill employees will to shop for work"
Found another article with more information:
The court found that the FTC’s effort to implement the rule likely exceeds its congressional authorization under the FTC Act and constitutes an arbitrary and capricious approach to the issue of regulating non-competes.
Rather than issue a nationwide injunction barring enforcement of the rule across the country, the court’s ruling is limited to the parties in the case.
The court intends to issue a final ruling on the merits by August 30, 2024, before the FTC rule is set to go into effect. The court’s subsequent ruling may prevent the ultimate implementation of the rule on a national level.
So basically If I understand this correctly, the court is slapping the FTC for jurisdiction and saying "until further ruling Ryan LLC can legally use their non compete clauses".
So the judge has a vague notion to rule against the FTC but it's not clear if they do or if it's gonna have national consequences, as this could just as well be a case specific ruling.
So yeah, the indicators lean a little bit towards non competes staying legal, but we're still way out from knowing what will happen.
My first question coming into this thread was, "is this a Trump judge?" I'm glad OP answered that in the post!
It’s always a Trump judge!™
It’s the legal corollary to “Did Trump actually say this fucked up thing?” Ha ha! You know he did, Timmy.
Also in the northern district of Texas. I smell some judicial venue shopping. Northern district of Texas is basically now the Mordor of the legal world.
"Corporations are presidents, my friend!"
Sad but true.
In all of human history, conservatives have oppressed the normal people. That's just who conservatives are at their core. They are natural, instinctive oppressors.
Never in history have conservatives been defeated by pacifism. Never. Swift, direct, forceful action is always required to defeat them.
The slower we are to act, the less likely we are to survive this. Every normal person you know is in mortal danger and no one is coming to save us. We need action.
It would be nice if liberals like biden and his supporters stopped either enabling or aping conservatives.
Liberals like Biden?
Yes, Biden is a liberal, which is one of many reasons why he supports genocide. It’s nothing new for liberals. Just look at the history of the USA for instance. This hellhole couldn’t exist without genocide.
Biden should overrule that as an official act.
Yeah he could still go ahead with the student loan relief too for that matter. All the stuff they say no to he has the power to say yes again now
What is the point of “democracy” in the USA if unelected judges who were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote but won the presidency due to the slaveowner-designed electoral college can just nullify anything that is even slightly good? It’s almost as though amerikkka has always been a fascist dictatorship toward anyone who is not a rich white male and that this country desperately needs a communist revolution right now.
Not everyone was a fan of the non-compete ban, this year or last. Republicans and other proponents of the clauses said they help prevent trained employees and their skills from being poached by competitors.
Wah! Pay people better and treat them like real people and they won’t need to be poached.
What's hilarious is that they don't really do all that much training anymore.
They just hire people who already have the skills. or tell people to "figure it out". They might pay you to go to a conference or something to improve skills... if those skills are hard to come by. It's a cost benefit analysis, and new-hires are generally cheaper.
they help prevent trained employees and their skills from being ~~poached~~ given optimal pay according to market forces by competitors.
This is fundamentally an anti-free-market opinion. But Republicans don't care about markets, they care about corporations.
That's the Free Market. Your skills to the highest bidder. Where are their strong libertarian values lol?
Looks like a limited injunction so far, but she intends to rule before the ban goes into effect and we can probably guess whose side this Federalist Society judge will come down on.
Could be stalling tactic to appease her handlers... what legal argument is there for blocking this?
Did DoL issue this ruling? I guess could be first post chevron consequence?
So how big of a tip do we think this company gave when the judge swiveled her iPad around?
In my field of work this is relatively important. For one thing there are company secrets that give the company an edge temporarily. Those things you generally don't patent because you don't want to disclose them yet.
So if you could just find another job and tell others these things, then yeah that could hurt a company. Usually we keep those things a just need to know level. So the guy who orders parts or the lady who does budgets don't get to know details.
But then on the overall it hurts us workers because we would like to be paid more or get a promotion or a new higher income somewhere else. But we are trapped. But I think this sort of thing is very niche. I mean, I literally spent 3 years of my life trying to find another team member with the right engineering background.
And it also hurts the country overall. People who know the technology are few and far apart so when we loose one to old age or disease so goes all that knowledge.
I for one try to grow engineers. I find those who are open minded and hungry for new ideas and then I bring them to the water. If the donkey drinks, then my job is done. It's really hard to see one of my guys just leave. It's years of my life and effort gone. But for them, it's spin-off open season. Or maybe they teach others the principles we developed together. And this in turn makes better and more engineers. Putting a limit on what we can say or do just sucks balls.
Sounds like your field of work should pay their employees a lot and treat them well.
And they do. I got no complaints from that end of the bargain myself. But It depends on when you start. Like if you start at a point when the company is not doing well, you are probably not going to get a good bump. But then you don't know what others make so it's mostly going to be compared with rumors from the net as to how much you might ask for. Anyway if you join in a bad year you get stuck with that pay while new people probably get a lot higher when profitability comes back. The owners have no incentive to pay you more just because they are making more.
There's a new law here in Washington State where the new positions must state the pay range. But then you can have a rate range that is far too large to be of any comparison or gage use.
The reason I would want freedom from these laws is so that I can get a good job doing what I like. Chasing a project from company to company just to learn more about it for example is not uncommon.
Aren’t non-competes basically unenforceable anyway? At least for individual contributors. You can’t contractually ban an individual from making money from their literal profession.
Senior execs and company founders with privileged information are a different story.
Not American, but in my country non-compete clauses are routinely put into employment contracts even though they have been demonstrated to be illegal in most cases.
It’s simply used to intimidate the ignorant.
Intimidating the ignorant is bad though.
When I was at the worker's council in a company a couple decades ago, we insisted that the company update the contracts to remove illegal clauses. The companies' position was that since they were illegal and therefore unenforceable that they did not matter. We argued that employees are less likely to know which particular laws impact which clause of their contracts than, say, full-time HR staff. And that not knowing they might assume that they are legal.
I'm happy to have moved to a country with worker councils in the law to protect workers in this way.
Depends on how bad you want to go to court, and how big of an asshole your former company is.
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