10 ms·

You’re all over this thread making this statement about fast food workers having to sign noncompetes. I could find no stories of this practice happening current

by abduhl 3y ago

You’re all over this thread making this statement about fast food workers having to sign noncompetes. I could find no stories of this practice happening currently, the most recent I could find is in 2016 and the article is about this practice ending in 2016. Which fast food chains in the year of our lord 2023 are putting noncompetes in their employee’s contracts?

hn_acker 3y ago
I haven't found anything about fast food restaurants in 2023 either. However restaurants had been using non-competes in 2017 [1]: > While the prevalence of the practice may vary by region, one labor study published in April estimated that around one in six people working in food preparation or service jobs was bound by a non-compete agreement, according to a survey of nearly 67,000 workers. The news article is from 2021 [1], but the one page in the labor study mentioning food services uses data from 2017 [2]. (The paper is on SSRN and there is no open-access mark, but I was able to open the PDF. Check page 51 out of 61 if you're able to open it.) There's still a problem even if only non-fast-food restaurants use non-competes, and a ban on non-competes should cover all restaurants at the very least. Biden signed an executive order asking the FTC to consider banning non-competes, though the FTC hasn't actually passed anything about non-competes yet. [1] https://thecounter.org/biden-targeting-non-compete-agreements-executive-order-push-workers/ https://thecounter.org/biden-targeting-non-compete-agreement... [2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3814403 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3814403
- abduhl 3y ago
  There is a huge difference between fast food fry cook, manager at the local Texas Roadhouse, and head chef at a 3 Michelin star restaurant. The claim was that the first was being made to sign a non-compete. Again, the only “fast food” level non-compete is the 2016 story where Jimmy John’s stopped doing it: “For example, readers may recall the infamous Jimmy John’s non-compete controversy of 2014. According to a Huffington Post report, the fast food chain required its employees and delivery workers to sign contracts agreeing not to work at any restaurant where sandwiches comprised 10 percent or more of total revenue (that’s right—not just sandwich businesses but any store that sold sandwiches or wraps) within three miles of a Jimmy John’s location for two years after leaving the company. Following an investigation from the New York attorney general’s office, Jimmy John’s dropped the clause in late 2016.” I don’t disagree that non-competes are a problem but this sort of hyperbole undercuts the stronger arguments that can be made for why noncompetes (without attendant compensation) should be forbidden.
  - tremon 3y ago
    So if I'm to reconcile both your and the GP's statements, "one in six people working in food preparation or service jobs" works as a head chef at a 3 Michelin star restaurant?
    - hn_acker 3y ago
      More like, incentives for non-competes scale upward from fast food restaurants (close to zero incentive) to 3 Michelin star restaurants (higher incentive by an unspecified but nontrivial degree). My previous comment in the thread expressed the sentiment "close to zero incentive is not zero", and abduhl correctly pointed out that I was getting sidetracked from the main topic of the overall discussion, which is that noncompetes are generally bad in principle, not because a few outlier businesses who definitely don't need noncompetes use them anyway.

by abduhl 3y ago

hn_acker 3y ago

I haven't found anything about fast food restaurants in 2023 either. However restaurants had been using non-competes in 2017 [1]: > While the prevalence of the practice may vary by region, one labor study published in April estimated that around one in six people working in food preparation or service jobs was bound by a non-compete agreement, according to a survey of nearly 67,000 workers. The news article is from 2021 [1], but the one page in the labor study mentioning food services uses data from 2017 [2]. (The paper is on SSRN and there is no open-access mark, but I was able to open the PDF. Check page 51 out of 61 if you're able to open it.) There's still a problem even if only non-fast-food restaurants use non-competes, and a ban on non-competes should cover all restaurants at the very least. Biden signed an executive order asking the FTC to consider banning non-competes, though the FTC hasn't actually passed anything about non-competes yet. [1] https://thecounter.org/biden-targeting-non-compete-agreements-executive-order-push-workers/ https://thecounter.org/biden-targeting-non-compete-agreement... [2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3814403 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3814403

abduhl 3y ago
There is a huge difference between fast food fry cook, manager at the local Texas Roadhouse, and head chef at a 3 Michelin star restaurant. The claim was that the first was being made to sign a non-compete. Again, the only “fast food” level non-compete is the 2016 story where Jimmy John’s stopped doing it: “For example, readers may recall the infamous Jimmy John’s non-compete controversy of 2014. According to a Huffington Post report, the fast food chain required its employees and delivery workers to sign contracts agreeing not to work at any restaurant where sandwiches comprised 10 percent or more of total revenue (that’s right—not just sandwich businesses but any store that sold sandwiches or wraps) within three miles of a Jimmy John’s location for two years after leaving the company. Following an investigation from the New York attorney general’s office, Jimmy John’s dropped the clause in late 2016.” I don’t disagree that non-competes are a problem but this sort of hyperbole undercuts the stronger arguments that can be made for why noncompetes (without attendant compensation) should be forbidden.
- tremon 3y ago
  So if I'm to reconcile both your and the GP's statements, "one in six people working in food preparation or service jobs" works as a head chef at a 3 Michelin star restaurant?
  - hn_acker 3y ago
    More like, incentives for non-competes scale upward from fast food restaurants (close to zero incentive) to 3 Michelin star restaurants (higher incentive by an unspecified but nontrivial degree). My previous comment in the thread expressed the sentiment "close to zero incentive is not zero", and abduhl correctly pointed out that I was getting sidetracked from the main topic of the overall discussion, which is that noncompetes are generally bad in principle, not because a few outlier businesses who definitely don't need noncompetes use them anyway.