Companies can protect their IP and training investments by becoming great places to work so no employee would agree to be “poached.”  Employees invest their time and talent in their employers, and yet (in Texas at least) are at risk of being fired at any time for any reason or no reason, without severance or benefits, and the employer’s noncompete is in many cases enforceable, even under those circumstances. Totally lopsided.  Yes, eliminating the noncompete creates risk for employers, but they’re in a lot better position to bear the risk than are individual employees with nothing to sell but their labor and with families to feed.  The FTC may not have the authority to pull this off.  Even if they lose, they will have made a big contribution towards showing how unfair noncompetes are and towards normalizing outlawing them.  Then the states can follow.  And maybe eventually all those Californians eyeing a move to low-rent Texas will start to add up the cost of noncompetes, lack of reproductive freedom, high property taxes, etc etc etc is not worth it and the current Texas boom will be over unless the state government is restored to sanity. A longshot, I know.

Companies can protect their IP and training investments by becoming great places to work so no employee would agree to be “poached.”  Employees invest their time and talent in their employers, and yet (in Texas at least) are at risk of being fired at any time for any reason or no reason, without severance or benefits, and the employer’s noncompete is in many cases enforceable, even under those circumstances. Totally lopsided.  Yes, eliminating the noncompete creates risk for employers, but they’re in a lot better position to bear the risk than are individual employees with nothing to sell but their labor and with families to feed.  The FTC may not have the authority to pull this off.  Even if they lose, they will have made a big contribution towards showing how unfair noncompetes are and towards normalizing outlawing them.  Then the states can follow.  And maybe eventually all those Californians eyeing a move to low-rent Texas will start to add up the cost of noncompetes, lack of reproductive freedom, high property taxes, etc etc etc is not worth it and the current Texas boom will be over unless the state government is restored to sanity. A longshot, I know.

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