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US Lawmakers Could Restrict the Use of Non-Compete Agreements

Monday May 17, 2021. 03:45 AM , from Slashdot
Politico's technology site Protocol reports that some U.S. lawmakers are getting angry about an unpopular but widespread corporate policy -- the non-compete agreement:

Non-compete agreements prohibit employees who leave their jobs from taking similar positions with potential competitors for a certain period of time. In the U.S., somewhere between 27.8% and 46.5% of private-sector workers are subject to non-compete agreements, according to a 2019 Economic Policy Institute study.

Such agreements are unenforceable in California and limited in nearby Washington, but they can still have adverse effects on employees nationwide. That's why a current piece of legislation, the Workforce Mobility Act, seeks at the federal level to restrict the use of non-compete agreements in most situations. Sens. Chris Murphy and Todd Young introduced the bill, which would only allow non-competes in certain 'necessary' situations... Non-compete legislation also has the support of President Joe Biden, who said during his campaign he would support such a bill. John Lettieri, president and CEO of the Economic Innovation Group, is a proponent of the Workforce Mobility Act and suggested the bill should enjoy broad support. 'We believe we're in a position where it's possible for this to become law,' Lettieri told Protocol.

'Whether you're a free market conservative or whether you're a pro-worker progressive, you can come from either of those ends of the spectrum and end up in the same place. And this is a special issue for that reason... Competition is generally good and for workers, competition among businesses for your labor is the most fundamental bargaining power you've got,' he said. But if companies hinder that with non-compete agreements, they create 'a downstream series of consequences that really are bad for the worker, they're bad for the broader labor market and it's increasingly clear they're bad for the broader economy as well....'

Companies such as Amazon and Microsoft — both headquartered in Seattle, Washington — and New York-headquartered IBM have all sued employees for breaking the terms of their non-compete agreements.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.
rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/yUtVjsRZH2E/us-lawmakers-could-restrict-the-use-of-non-comp...
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