Trump Judge Blocks Biden From Letting Sandwich Shop Workers Change Jobs
Stop thinking your employer doesn't own you, silly.
A federal judge in Texas recently blocked a new Federal Trade Commission rule that would have prohibited new employee non-compete agreements starting September 4. Judge Ada Brown of the Northern District of Texas ruled on August 20 that the FTC lacked the power to prevent employers from requiring even entry-level fast food workers to enter into really stupid contracts that prohibit them from getting better jobs at competing businesses. And maybe, given recent Supreme Court rulings, the FTC has no power to regulate anything at all, you never know.
Noncompete agreements were supposedly needed to keep executives and industrial secret-havers from stealing important “trade secrets” — like “Arby’s Arby-Q barbecue sandwiches contain no more than 30 percent roadkill” — and giving them to competing businesses. But for workers below the management level, the agreements all too frequently suppressed wages and kept people from changing jobs or starting their own businesses. That’s why Joe Biden started calling for an end to the damn things since his 2023 State of the Union address.
This is a matter of some personal importance to me. Had he had the chance, I know that my super gung-ho manager at the Arby’s where I worked for a week and a half in college would have jumped at the chance to make me take to the grave my knowledge of how the funny-looking grey-greenish meat ends (not spoiled, just odd) went into the sauce vat for the Arby-Q sandwiches. (This is a personal memory of my perceptions of a single, possibly rogue manager from over 40 years ago, not a characterization of current or former practices at Arby’s Restaurants, a subsidiary of the RAMJAC Corporation. Hi Ho.)
Backers of the FTC rule argued that existing intellectual property laws do a fine job of protecting genuine trade secrets, and that for the vast majority of folks, noncompete agreements amounted to cartel-style barriers to competition. The agency estimated the rule could potentially increase wages by as much as $488 billion over the next decade, amounting to a $524 annual wage increase for the average worker.
But businesses of all sorts, mostly Big, and the US Chamber of Commerce objected, arguing that stifling competition is the American way, and that the FTC has no business interfering with how they break their workers’ spirits and keep wages down. Judge Brown held that the FTC “exceeded its statutory authority,” that the rule was “arbitrary and capricious,” an attitude that is reserved solely for petty dictator jackwad bosses, and that the rule would “cause irreparable harm” to said jackwad plaintiffs.
When the rule was introduced in April, FTC Chair Lina M. Khan argued that the “freedom to change jobs is core to economic liberty and to a competitive, thriving economy,” and that noncompete agreements unfairly limited workers’ freedom to seek higher wages and better work conditions, and that noncompetes were bad for business too, “depriving businesses of a talent pool that they need to build and expand.”
The ruling is pretty much guaranteed to go to the US Supreme Court, because in July, a different federal judge in Pennsylvania upheld the FTC rule, noting in that case that “The FTC's substantive rulemaking authority has been confirmed by circuit courts interpreting the FTC Act, as well as by Congress when it enacted its 1975 and 1980 Amendments to the Act,” which sounds convincing enough until you remember that was a long time ago and the Supreme Court now believes businesses can do almost anything they want.
If we’re lucky, the case may eventually be resolved without the Supremes deciding that indentured servitude is also legal again.
PREVIOUSLY!
[Ars Technica / NPR / Ruling in Ryan v. FTC ]
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When I signed the paperwork to become an apprentice in the IBEW, it contained a non-compete clause, ostensibly so one wouldn't take one's acquired knowledge and peddle it to nonunion shops. We were told that the local had never enforced it, never had to. All we had to do was look and see what full time nonunion electricians were being paid and compare it to what the negotiated wage was for 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘴, never mind the following years...
They were absolutely correct and didn't even mention insurance...
ORGANIZE!
Absolutely nothing good begins with "A federal judge in Texas".