Employers have all sorts of legal tricks up their sleeves designed to continue to abuse workers even after they have left a toxic workplace. A close cousin to non-disclosure and non-disparagement clauses is the non-complete clause, which essentially means your employer can stop you from finding another job in the same field. Yes, you read that right: Even if you are miserable at your current job, your employer may have the legal right to say you cannot work for anyone else who “competes” with their company.
Sometimes, employers may slip in non-compete clauses into employment agreements when you start working, so you may not have noticed it. Other times, the clause is attached to a severance package or legal settlement agreement.
Thankfully, in my state of California, such policies are illegal so I did not have to agree to that. However, I know of several colleagues in other states who have. In one case, a woman founded a vegan company, was later pushed out by her investors, and then was barred from working for a competitor for two years. So her entire company, along with the work she put in for many years, was essentially stolen, and now she cannot even apply that knowledge elsewhere at a similar company. Same for another colleague who worked in sales for a large vegan company; she was also barred from working for the competition for two years. When you consider how small the vegan food industry is, this policy is extremely punishing. It’s a disgusting way to control workers after they leave and should be banned everywhere.
Thankfully, some states are fighting back against this insane policy. States such as Illinois, Colorado, Washington, and others have imposed income minimums that employers must meet to bind employees to non-compete clauses. The idea being that higher paid employees are more valuable so this makes the policy more justifiable. (Sometimes states limit the time frame and geography of the restriction as well.)
Following this school of thought, we have a federal bill recently introduced by California Rep. Mike Garcia, called “The Restoring Workers’ Rights Act”. The measure would effectively ban non-compete agreements for non-exempt employees, who generally tend to make lower salaries.
According to one account, the bill would go even further. It “would ban agreements far beyond non-compete agreements and could also operate to ban confidentiality agreements, as well as customer and employee non-solicit agreements.”
Confidentiality agreements are usually attached to legal settlements and differ from NDAs because they can mean you cannot even say any such agreement exists. “Non-solicitation” clauses are often used either in conjunction with, or instead of, non-complete clauses and essentially say you cannot take customers with you.
It’s time employers stop trying to control employees even after they leave. Especially if you have abused your workers: let them go in peace to earn a living elsewhere.