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Comment by dsr_ | Hacker News Reader

Counter-argument: in the early 1990s, the company at which I was working had a key technical employee leave. The next week, the company asked all the other technical employees to sign non-compete agreements. We all refused. Nothing more was said.

You always have the right to quit and work for a competitor up until you sign that right away, and the worst that they can do to you for not signing is fire you.

That was not Hawaii, though.

(I didn't realize quite how crazy some of the owners/managers of that company were until years later.)

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After working for an IT agency for years, my father was presented with a non-compete agreement and told he had to sign it. It made him realize that his clients were probably more loyal to him than to his company. Within a week he incorporated a business, left the company, and took all of his clients with him.

That's not much of a right, though.

Not your company, not your rights. Go join a worker's cooperative or start a union if you want more say in your employment.

Are you saying that, because the employee doesn't own the company (or, you know, own shares), they don't get any rights?

That's... laughable.

The employee gets any and all rights afforded by local legislation. In most at-will U.S. States, it's almost nothing.

Isn't that effectively what happens though? Barring strong worker's protections (which is not a thing in most of the US) or strong unions (which is not a thing either in most of the US), the only rights an employee gets are "take it or leave it". And that's pretty much what "at will employment" is.

For what it's worth, right to work states that have at will employment also means that a noncompete cannot prevent you from using your skill set to earn a living (aka - you have the "right to work" hence the name). In order for them to be enforceable at all they have to be extremely specific in scope and for a reasonable amount of time, usually only pertaining to not leaving for a direct competitor and taking existing clients with you.

Basically, if you live in an area with a lot of employment options, going to a competitor and trying to take customers with you would be enforceable. If you're in an area without a lot of options for what you do, the noncompete is toilet paper because you can't be prevented from earning a living.

It's 2015. Worker rights have been dead for a decade now, not to imply they were strong at any point before.

We don't have rights via our skills. If you want to have better working conditions, bribe the politicians to make it so (unlikely because you probably aren't paid enough) or organize your fellows into striking until you get better terms (even more unlikely).

Or start your own company, where you can make whatever rules you like.

Alternatively: Use your democratic right to make laws that employers have to follow or go to prison.

you don't have the right to make laws that violate other people's rights.

Sure you do. Positivs rights and negative rights and all.

Where on that spectrum fall laws that are hostile to employees forming unions?

But you can make laws that protect people's rights.

I don't care who's company it is. Owning a company doesn't give you the right to do whatever you want.

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