What Next TBD: Why the Feds Want to Kill Noncompetes

Slate Technology

Slate

Society & Culture, Technology, History

4.6 • 636 Ratings

🗓️ 13 January 2023

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You might think of noncompete agreements as mostly limited to highly skilled, highly paid tech workers to protect trade secrets. But one-third of workers bound by noncompetes make $13/hour or less: fast-food workers, security guards, and the like. Noncompete clauses not only give employers leverage over their employees—both during and after their employment—but studies have shown the agreements are a weight on the economy, which is why the FTC is angling for a federal ban. Guest: Elizabeth Wilkins, director of the Office of Policy Planning, Federal Trade Commission Host: Lizzie O’Leary If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next TBD. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	I made you think you was real.
0:02.0	My name is Caden Sinclair.
0:04.0	Some people call us American royalty.
0:06.0	We were Liars.
0:08.0	A new series on Prime Video.
0:10.0	We were happy. We wanted for nothing.
0:12.0	Based on the best-selling novel.
0:15.0	Something terrible happened last summer,
0:17.0	and I have no memory of what or who hurt me.
0:20.0	No one in my family will tell me.
0:22.7	When you're left for dead, you want answers. We Will Liars. New series, watch now, only on Prime Video.
0:33.6	Greetings. I hope everyone is staying safe and well. As you know, these are some difficult
0:44.0	times that we're going through right now. Times that were actually quite unimaginable
0:48.7	just a couple weeks ago. But together, we will get through this.
0:57.1	Prudential security has an active Facebook page.
1:02.6	It's filled with everything from videos like this one about COVID in the spring of 2020 to posts celebrating the holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Veterans Day.
1:08.4	Even pictures of its security guards being recognized for their work.
1:13.2	But what Facebook doesn't show is that those guards, who worked in a handful of different
1:17.8	states, were forced to sign non-compete agreements that restricted who they could work for
1:22.7	once they left the company.
1:24.2	Minimum wage security guards who had non-competes that prevented them from working
1:28.7	for a competing company within a hundred miles and with threatened damages of $100,000.
	...

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