Noncompetes have harmed healthcare too.
But industry interests want that harm to continue.
The FTC has banned non-competes.
Under the final Noncompete Rule, the FTC adopts a comprehensive ban on new noncompetes with all workers, including senior executives.
The final rule provides that it is an unfair method of competition—and therefore a violation of Section 5—for employers to enter into noncompetes with workers.
Note: The regulation's effective date is 120 days after Federal Register publication - not after the FTC's public announcement.
I posted a year ago about how non-competes have harmed me personally and people I know, at the time that the FTC was accepting public comments on this issue.
Noncompetes hurt employees and patients This isn't just a labor issue, it's a healthcare issue. CHLOE HUMBERT MAR 16, 2023
I had to switch therapists multiple times because the therapists couldn't take patients with them when they left a practice because, I'm sure they had noncompete clauses, which interrupted my healthcare treatment for medical PTSD. At a time I had considerable work-related stress. Apparently so did my therapists because they left the practice even with a noncompete.
There was a doctor here in Scranton that got fired by Geisinger and then they sued him in court over a noncompete clause! People were very upset about losing him as a doctor and many came out to support this doctor for his day in court because he was well-liked. There were rumours at the time that the bean counters were just looking for a reason to get rid of him because he didn’t meet unreasonable quotas.
It’s inappropriate for a huge health system to do this when they have such a monopoly over healthcare in our area and we have a shortage of primary care doctors.
This isn't just a labor issue, it's a healthcare issue.
Non-competes and non-solicitation agreements should NEVER apply to healthcare. Frankly, I don’t think they ought to apply to hairdressers either. But putting non-compete agreements on healthcare workers damages the entire healthcare system, public health, damages communities, and is a patient safety issue as well as affects the quality of medical care.
Unfortunately Antonin Scalia’s son of all people is already going to try lawfare to activist judge their way to catering to business interests, and maybe attempting to dismantle regulation altogether. Because of course. So it’s time to write to elected representatives to make noise.
It’s a big win. And yet, within a few hours of the vote, well-known conservative lawyer Eugene Scalia, the son of former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, sued the FTC over its non-compete ban, with the goal of getting the judiciary to strike the rule down, and perhaps even declare the commission itself unconstitutional. So what happened? What are the legal arguments? What are the stakes? And who is likely to prevail? That’s what I’m writing about today.
Non-competes in Germany can only be enforced if the employer agrees to pay half the most recent salary and benefits for the entire duration of the non-compete agreement, which maxes out at 2 years, and also applies to freelance and contract workers.