So, here I am at home, going to check my e-mail, and here is a representative from Connecticut, giving me a response to my thoughts on Camp Bow Wow and their non-compete agreement. Yes, the one that states that their employees can be fired at any time for any reason and they can’t work within a 25 mile radius of a competitor.
Yes, the employees should be on non-compete agreements because the standard is that these employees are being trained to take care of dogs. It wouldn’t be fair to allow them to take those skills and work somewhere else. Yes, it doesn’t matter if these employees are abused. It doesn’t matter if they can make more money somewhere else.
Anyway, this was the response that I received from an aid who represents a state Senator in Connecticut.
The latest legislation concerning non-compete clauses have been in 2013- HB 6658 (actually passed but was vetoed by the governor) and 2007-HB 6989 (enacted – codified at 31-50a & b). I also saw that there were proposed pieces of legislation as far back as 1999 that were variations on these bills. At least one was aimed at prohibiting non-compete agreements for employees making less than $200,000 annually.
As you can see we have attempted to address this issue in the past. If you’d like additional information I suggest reading the information provided in the two bills I mentioned above.
HB6989
HB6658
Please let me know if you have any additional questions,
So, I guess I’m supposed to read this and say okay, if I have a problem, then I should take it up with Governor Dannel Malloy. I had already spoken to someone in his office. Yes, she didn’t know about the story in the Huffington Post either. All she could tell me was that new legislation would have to be brought up.
Maybe Governor Malloy should think about all this the next time he goes into Subway to order a sandwich. Maybe he should talk to his friends and see they have their dogs being taken care of at Camp Bow Wow. Yes, you can’t be embarrassed about something that you don’t know about.
I guess you can say that I don’t accept a lot of things about non-compete agreements. I don’t accept it when some reporter from the New York Times says that companies are squeezing their employees. You see, I have met with employment lawyers about my non-compete agreement. Let me tell you what they said.
“Companies like yours have an attitude that they’re doing you a favor by giving you a job because they can fire you at any time for any reason and they don’t have to give you anything, not even a severance package, because the only reward you get from this contract is a job.
“These agreements should be illegal but they’re not illegal. It’s up to the government to do something about this. As long as they do nothing, then this will continue.”
So, you see, there is your answer in a nutshell. In the meantime, we have dog groomers, cat groomers, maids, employees at Subway, PotBelly, Jimmy John’s, and even Camp Bow Wow have to be on non-compete agreements. In addition, this also included a 16 year old teenage girl who was on a non-compete agreement in order to work at a summer camp in Massachusetts.
You think this is the first time that people have talked about lower level employees being on a non-compete agreement. Watch the video from Fox Business News and see how Melissa Francis puts a positive spin on non-compete agreements when the CEO tells her that I do this to protect all of my employees. Watch how his opponent reacts when he says more than once that this isn’t fair to lower level employees, only to have Ms Francis cut this man off.
Take a look at the video from Subway on a woman that was fired from her job because she was sick and was told that she could not work within 100 miles of another sandwich shop. What does Fox say to this video. Be careful what you sign. Yes, blame the employee for getting themselves into this mess.
Yes, unemployment rates are at their highest in this country and here are companies, putting employees from all walks of life on a non-compete agreement, an agreement that only leads to a career of indentured servitude.
In the end, we only know about this if we have a search on google news or we’re on Twitter. Then we get to read these stories on Twitter and retweet them. Yes, employees are the ones who are supposed to be outraged since we are the ones who are working all day long and the only thing we get is advice from Michael Bloomberg who says, get in early, stay late, and hold it in.
This is our corporate world and for thousands of employees across the country, we are going to be on non-compete agreements. Blame whoever you want but in the end, it’s like a tree in a forest because when it falls, no one hears about it since we can’t have any stories on any news or cable networks about how our livelihoods have changed over the past 15 years.
Ron Hummer
http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/2619366929001/do-non-compete-agreements-stifle-innovation/#sp=show-clips
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