Over the past few weeks, there have been stories regarding low wage workers that have been put on non-compete agreements. The first one was the employees at Jimmy John’s, followed by a maintenance worker in Seattle, then the employees at Camp Bow Wow.
Of course, this is nothing new since employees at Subway and Pot Belly have also signed non-compete agreements in the past. A manager at Subway was fired at her job in Michigan for being sick and found out that she could not work within 100 miles of a sandwich shop for one year after she was terminated.
If we want to add to this list, we have maids, dog and cat groomers, and hairdressers as well that are on non-compete agreements. In addition, people who work at a summer camp in Massachusetts were also told to sign a non-compete agreement. One of those employees was a 16 year old teenage girl.
In any case, the most recent sighting of a non-compete agreement took place in Stamford Connecticut at Camp Bow Wow. The story was in the Huffington Post on November 24th. I decided that I would call some of the state representatives in Connecticut to see what their reaction was to the story.
I guess the first thing I can tell you that I called four representatives and none of them knew about this story. I don’t think it would have made a difference if it ran in the Hartford Courant since none of the representatives in Seattle knew of the story in the Seattle Times about Benny Almeida’s non-compete agreement that he signed as a maintenance worker at ServiceMaster.
Other than that, the first representative started giving me a history lesson in non-compete agreements by telling me that this started with TV news anchors and celebrity journalists who were griping about their non-compete agreement. My response was that I don’t have any sympathy for them since their contracts are much shorter than the others that I have mentioned - 6 months - and that celebrity journalists such as Ann Curry get a reward of $12 million dollars a year for their contract which expires after a few years.
The non-compete agreements such as mine or Camp Bow Wow or the others that I have mentioned don’t expire. Our only reward is that we are allowed to work in these companies. We can be fired at any time for any reason and we can’t work for a competitor or a company that has a product that competes with my company from 2-5 years. Other contracts in the media industry for radio and TV stations don’t last more than 6-12 months and they have a Union that fights for them.
If you want me to have some sympathy for celebrity journalists or radio and TV personalities, then my answer would be sure, I’ll consider it as soon as one of the network news or cable stations will actually take the time to run a story on TV regarding the stories that I have mentioned. Obviously, that won’t be done at this point. Maybe that is part of the reason that state and government officials don’t know about these stories that seem to get retweeted all the time on Twitter.
In addition, I did speak with an aide to one of of the state Senators that is involved in labor issues in Connecticut. His response was okay, I’ll print the story out in the Huffington Post and give it to the Senator but I don’t see us doing anything about non-compete agreements at this time.
That’s fine. No rush on this. More people can just sign non-compete agreements because when they do, then they’ll be stuck just like I am because if there is legislation in the future, it will only be for people who didn’t sign a non-compete agreement since state laws can’t invalidate a contract.
As far as the other State senators were concerned, the answer was the same. We’ll show the story to the Senators and let you know what we think. I didn’t get a response from the representatives in Seattle and I don’t expect to get a response from the representatives in Connecticut as well.
Yes, these are the people that you vote for, the ones who can create legislation to stop non-compete agreements. One idea would be to say that employees who make less than $50,000 a year shouldn’t be on a non-compete agreement since they can’t afford over $10,000 in legal fees to hire an employment lawyer to fight this. Good luck with getting that passed in any state.
So, there you have it. People are on Twitter retweeting these stories and no one in the state and local governments is paying any attention to this. Eventually, this will all die down until we have another story on non-compete agreements. Maybe that can be about a chain of restaurants. After all, if you saw the movie, As Good As It Gets, you know that a waitress can get a customer to go to another diner since Helen Hunt was able do do that with her relationship with Jack Nicholson.
In any case, continue to retweet the stories. Maybe next time, a reporter will take the extra time to get a comment from a state or local representative although I’m sure the answer would be no comment. After all, if you watch Fox News, you would see that we need to eradicate Obamacare before tackling this problem.
I realize that I’m sounding like a Cynic but those are the answers. Retweeting stories is no different than being at a football game and standing up for wave. It’s a lot of fun to be outraged about these stories but the fact is that your representatives don’t feel the same way that you do.
Ron Hummer
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