As House Republicans showed the nation how completely unable to govern they are or will be, failing to elect a speaker for the seventh vote in three days, the Biden administration showed that there are things it can keep getting done. Big things, even.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a proposal Thursday to ban employers from imposing noncompete clauses on workers, preventing them from moving to a competing business or even starting their own business after leaving a job. If you’re reading that and imagining that these apply to high-level developers or researchers in deep with proprietary technology, think again. One in 5 workers in the U.S. is subject to a noncompete clause, according to the FTC, coming to around 30 million workers. That’s not a legitimate business practice to protect trade secrets. It’s a strategy to control workers.
In fact, according to one study, 1 in 6 food service or preparation workers is subject to a noncompete. Most notoriously, sandwich chain Jimmy John's required that its sandwich makers sign the agreements for years, preventing workers from going not just to, say, Subway, but to any restaurant or business within 3 miles of any Jimmy John’s that did 10% or more of their business in sandwiches or wraps. Jimmy John’s abandoned that requirement in 2016 following a settlement with the New York attorney general’s office. But the practice remains common in the food service industry, and employers often enforce or attempt to enforce them against workers who leave—while they make an unknown number of workers feel stuck in jobs they would like to leave.