The Federal Trade Commission has voted 3-2 to ban non-compete agreements. NCA’s affect 18% of the work force, or about 30 million workers. They have been used for fast food workers and CEO’s alike. Perhaps as recently as 20 years ago, they were only used for senior executives. But, their use has since grown in
The plaintiff, Mary Pearce, worked for Universal Lubricants for 16 years selling lubricants. In 2016, Petrochoice acquired Universal. Petrochoice told Pierce and the other employees they must sign a non-compete agreement. A few months later, Petrochoice fired Pearce. Because of the non-compete agreement, Pearce had trouble finding work. A few months later, she found a
More and more, Texas employers rely on non-compete agreements. More and more, those agreements are permeating down below to blue collar jobs. In Elite Auto Body v. Autocraft, No. 03-15-00064 (Tex.App. Austin 5/5/2017), Autocraft sued Elite Auto Body and three former employees of Autocraft. Autocraft claimed the three employees took trade secrets with them
Among the provisions employed increasingly by employers is the “claw back” provision. Under the typical claw back provision, the employee agrees to a certain salary or wage. The employer then requires the employee to agree that if the employee fails to provide a notice of resignation within a certain amount of time, or if the
The sandwich chain, Jimmy John’s, has agreed to stop including non-compete agreements in its hiring documents. I wrote about the chain’s requirement for non-compete agreements here. As I mentioned then, they were requiring the low wage earners to sign these agreements. As part of a settlement, Jimmy John’s is now dropping that non-compete agreement.
There are a lot of myths out there about employment law. From time to time, I talk about a few of those myths.
At will
“At will” employment means an employee can be fired for anything.” Texas is an at-will state. An employee can indeed be fired for a lot of things, but not for
Non-compete agreements have been used in the market place for decades within certain sectors, such as physicians and some sales representatives. In the past year or so, I have heard from several workers who signed non-compete agreements. One poor young woman, in her 20’s, was sued after she changed jobs. She simply moved to a
Non-competition agreements have been around for a long time. They have usually been used for saelsmen who have access to cloesly guarded customer lists and to doctors. But, now, they have been uased for hourly employees at a sandwich chain. Jimmy John’s has been sued because it requires employees to agree they will not work
If you are going to quit, get ready. Clear your office of embarrassing computer files, personal papers and anything else you want to keep. As the ABA Bar Journal advises lawyers, once you resign, your employer may very likely escort you out of the office immediately with nothing more than a promise to send your
Hewlett-Packard sues Mark Hurd claiming that his new job as CEO for Oracle will require him to disclose trade secrets. Apparently, HP never required Hurd to sign a non-disclosure or non-compete agreement. So, HP is suing under the theory of inevitable disclosure of trade secrets. HP filed suit in California, which according to one observer