Why the boss rules: Why you shouldn’t tell your boss where you work, even when you aren’t in a cubical cubical
This is not as good as it could be because there are more than 10 million unfilled jobs in the United States. It isn’t very good. For most Americans, it is their employers who decide where and how they work, in some cases right down to their bathroom breaks.
The government of a boss is where we lie when working. It’s a dictatorship. The boss rules,” Elizabeth Anderson, a professor of philosophy and women’s studies at the University of Michigan, told me last week. She wrote a book about private government and why we don’t talk about it.
Despite the obvious dominance of employers, though, a lot of economic research and legal scholarship is based on the libertarian notion that employers and employees have relatively equal bargaining power and are thus “free to contract” with one another as truly independent parties.
The idea of roughly equal power is harmful. The Supreme Court decision last year upheld validity of the contracts in which employees surrender the right to collective litigation against their employers. The decision was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch and it assumed that when workers give up their important right it is their free choice.
The FTC’s Proposal to Imply Noncompete Agreements on Workforces and a Rescinding All Noncompete Contracts
The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday said it is proposing a rule to ban employers from imposing noncompete agreements on workers and to rescind all existing noncompete agreements.
The FTC’s reasoning: Such agreements, which affect millions of rank-and-file employees and independent contractors across industries, in addition to business executives, have suppressed competition, wages and entrepreneurship.
This could affect the janitor and the CEO alike, according to an attorney who once worked for a human resources executive.
One thing the proposed rule wouldn’t do is ban employers from imposing other types of employment restrictions, such as non-disclosure agreements or non-solicitation agreements that ban employees from poaching a company’s customers when they leave.
The proposed rule will be open for public comment for 60 days after which the FTC will review the comments and possibly amend the rule before issuing a final version.
The deliberation process could be extended by at least a few months given the broad implications of the proposal.
Employers have argued that they need noncompetes to protect trade secrets and investments they put into growing their businesses, including training workers.
The cycle of fast inflation today and tomorrow will be set off by employees seeking wage increases to cover costs of living.
Noncompete agreements in 2021: Why high-paid workers shouldn’t have the secret formulas for Coca-Cola, but scientists can’t afford it
“These aren’t just high-paid executives or scientists who hold secret formulas for Coca-Cola so Pepsi can’t get their hands on it,” Biden said in a speech about competition in 2021. “A recent study found one in five workers without a college education is subject to non-compete agreements. They’re construction workers, hotel workers, disproportionately women and women of color.”
The FTC estimates that a ban on noncompete agreements could increase wages by nearly $300 billion a year by allowing workers to pursue better opportunities.