My not-very-fair-and-balanced take on non-compete clauses

[rodneyho]

I decided to delve a bit into non-compete clauses - necessary evil or merely evil?

http://www.accessatlanta.com/weblog...-radio-noncompete-clauses-necessary-evil-or-/

 

[bnaivar1]

Here's my $.02; If you quit, I can see a non-compete as a logical protection for the station. If a station cuts you loose, they are saying "You can't make the numbers we want". So why do they think you can make the numbers for their competitor?

 

[jabba17]

Here's my $.02; If you quit, I can see a non-compete as a logical protection for the station. If a station cuts you loose, they are saying "You can't make the numbers we want". So why do they think you can make the numbers for their competitor?

The problem with that is you could do something to make them fire you instead of quitting, like saying a bunch of controversial stuff on the air, to get them to fire you quickly so you can break the non-compete and jump ship to a competitor with no restrictions.

The typical "remedy" for that is some kind of "willful misconduct" clause, but then you open the door for the employer to try and find willful misconduct on the part of the employee for any kind of termination to avoid having to break the noncompete. This happens with unemployment insurance all the time--a company wants to RIF a bunch of employees, but doesn't want to take the unemployment insurance hit for being a big firer. So they find reasons to fire their employees for misconduct.