BFD: The FTC Just Banned Non-Compete Clauses

The Federal Trade Commission voted yesterday to adopt a historic and far-reaching ban on noncompete agreements, which are common now in almost all job markets. Thanks, Lina Khan! Via HuffPost:

The agency has said that the agreements, in which workers are forbidden from seeking a job with a competing business for a certain period of time, lead to an “unfair method of competition” and violate federal law. The vote by the agency’s five commissioners this week means the ban will move forward.

[...] Noncompetes have been under fire for years because of the way they can lock workers into jobs and suppress wages by reducing mobility in the labor market. And they are not strictly the domain of well-compensated executives and engineers; these days, even fast-food workers can find themselves barred from taking a job at a competing business.

“The FTC estimated that the ban would boost wages by between $400 billion and $488 billion over 10 years.”

Just an example: I had a great doctor who was leaving for another practice. But he was not allowed to tell me where he was!

Eugene Scalia, of course, has already filed a lawsuit, because anything that helps working people is a threat to his friends.

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