Non-Compete Agreements
An Employee Perspective
Ron Hummer
Copyright 2014 Ron Hummer,
All rights reserved
ISBN-13: 9781456623401
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Introduction
So, what inspired me to write this book, Non-Compete Agreements: An Employee Perspective? Well, I guess I wanted some kind of closure. I thought that by writing this book, I will have done everything I could to get my point across once and for all.
What is my point? My non-compete agreement has had a horrible impact on my life for over 8 years. People need to know this. People need to know why this still has an impact on my life right now.
Maybe it was my most recent interview as well. I go to all the trouble to prepare for it. Read the website. Watch the videos. Of course, I’m in competition with other people for the job and all of them have better qualifications than I do which included industry related experience. It was then that I started to realize how hopeless my situation was.
Yet all I can do is keep trying. Keep applying for jobs on the web. Hope that I catch a break. Or in my case, a miracle. The fact is that I know that the chances of me getting a job in another industry are slim and none. Yet I have no choice. I have to keep trying.
Another reason I decided to write this book was for all the people who are saying that the government shouldn’t be the ones getting involved in big business. If anything, the opposite has been the case when it comes to non-compete agreements. I hope that by the time that you’re finished reading this book, you’ll understand that the state and local governments have neglected employees and stood up for companies, non-compete lawyers and special interest groups. This has to end in order to stop non-compete agreements from spreading even further without regulation.
In addition, we have a lot of people who really don’t know anything about non-compete agreements and will go out of their way to make it sound like they know what they’re talking about when in reality, they really don’t know anything about the subject.
For example, I met with a representative from Occupy Wall Street. I asked him if he ever heard of non-compete agreements. He said he didn’t. I tried to explain what they were but he cut me off immediately. He said that every state has a right to work state and non-compete agreements didn’t mean anything. Of course, since this person is a Union Representative, right to work only applies as a necessity to join a union, which has nothing to do with a non-compete agreement.
So much for a group of people who talk and protest about greed on Wall Street. I guess that only counts when this group has Union reps and they don’t care about you unless you’re going to be in their Union.
Another time, I was having a conversation with my bank manager about non-compete agreements. Sure, he heard of them. As he put it, they’ll never be enforced in court because that is depriving you of a living. Of course, I told him that that wasn’t the case. He was stunned. His conclusion. It doesn’t make sense. As he put it, so you can lose your job and collect unemployment benefits when you can work but can’t work due to your non-compete agreement and be a burden on the state.
Some people have said to me that the government would never allow this. They would not stand for this. How could they let this happen? Yet, the answer is that the government is aware of non-compete agreements and they let it happen because they are controlled by special interest groups. You will see that in action when I talk about what happened in Georgia with Amendment One.
There are times when I read an article online about non-compete agreements and I go down and read through the comments. There is always someone who makes remarks like this is illegal. This will never hold up in court. Or a judge will throw this out.
I mean, it’s one thing to express your opinion but doesn’t it sound better when you say I was on a non-compete agreement and the judge threw it out of court. No, because the reality is that a judge can enforce a non-compete agreement if he or she wants to. Doesn’t matter if you’re unemployed. In fact, there was a case in Indiana where a judge ruled that a five year non-compete agreement was considered reasonable when a woman tried to sue for relief for her non-compete agreement against her employer, a printing company.
Yet there is always someone who wants to make a comment on an article about non-compete agreements even though they don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s like going to the sports section of a newspaper and reading comments from people who say that their baseball team should make some trades and their team will be better or the manager doesn’t know what he’s doing. Then again, people who know me on Twitter know that I do this. Not a great example.
Okay, let me put this another way. For the people who feel that they want to say something online when an article is written on non-compete agreements, keep this in mind. Non-compete lawyers will look at these comments and laugh. Not only will they laugh but they’ll run to their colleagues and say, hey did you read what this person said about non-compete agreements? He said that they’re illegal and a judge will throw them out of court. He also said that the government will never let this happen. Wow, we really have a good thing going. Then they’ll laugh some more before they go and put out an injunction on dog and cat groomer or a maid if he or she violated their non-compete agreements. If that doesn’t work, then they’ll drag them into court and start a lawsuit.
Then again, I still run into people who would say I don’t believe you. If what you say is true, then why isn’t this on the news. I’ve never seen a report on this on news programs like The Today Show, GMA, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, or other stations.
I can understand that people feel this way. The last thing people want to hear is that there are thousands of people like me who are at will employees and we can be fired at any time for any reason and we can’t work for a competitor or companies in our industry for 2 years or even 5 years. It’s a lot to take in because we really want to believe that the government won’t permit this. Yet the truth is that as much as I feel frustrated by people like the one I met at Occupy Wall Street, this is the major reason that people do not know about non-compete agreements.
All of these stations have avoided doing stories on non-compete agreements. My answer is that once you read this book and the chapters on The Heroes Of Massachusetts and The Media and Non-Compete Agreements, you will know that there is no reason why these stations should not talk about non-compete agreements. They have no excuses to not do a story anymore and the fact is that this is the reason that people are uninformed about non-compete agreements. By not doing stories on non-compete agreements, what is happening is that employees are being kept in the dark about how damaging these contracts are and the media is not doing their job by covering this. The sad part is that local stations and business news stations have done a poor job of covering this topic. You will see examples of that in this book.
As a result, people are unaware of non-compete agreements and the fact is that if you want to follow stories on this subject, then you will have to be on Twitter or Google News. Yes, it’s sad that this is the only way that you can be updated on news that is so important to employees because the media will not cover it.
In any case, your questions are about to be answered here. I guess when it happened to me, I was stunned as well. Then nightmare began and it only got worse. It was like having a black cloud on my back for years, and no matter what I did, I could not shake it.
By the end of this book, one important fact will be proven about non-compete agreements. That fact is that today, we live in a society where it’s okay that an employee gets fired from their job and their employer has the right