Let’s Just Ban Non-Compete Agreements Nationally

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The White House is propagating the conventional wisdom about non-compete employment clauses:

The main economically and societally beneficial uses of non-competes are to protect trade secrets, which can promote innovation, and to incentivize employers to invest in worker training because of reduced probability of exit from the firm. However, evidence indicates that non-competes are also being used in instances where the benefit is likely to be low (e.g., where workers report they do not have trade secrets), but the cost is still high to the worker.

This is in response to the increasing use of non-competes among low-income workers, which is a particularly egregious bit of overreach. You may recall the case of Jimmy John’s, which apparently considers its sandwich-making process so unique and innovative that it forces its employees to sign non-competes. No working at Subway for you!

I have a different view of this whole thing since I’ve spent my entire life in California, where non-compete agreements have been generally unenforceable for over a century. As near as I can tell, we nonetheless have a thriving software market, plenty of lawyers, a prosperous content industry (Hollywood), and a generally dynamic economy. Our lack of non-competes doesn’t seem to do us any harm at all. In fact, it might be responsible for a lot of our growth.

So forget the difference between high-powered jobs and sandwich makers. If it were up to me, I’d just outlaw non-competes nationally. It would help empower workers and it would probably be an overall net positive for the economy. The corporate hacks would howl, but they all do business in California and know perfectly well that they can survive just fine without them.

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate