Fighting for working people.

Pretty clear how these people feel about slavery.

-- Mal

Good for Al...

What would be the punishment?

but I think that the threat alone is enough.

in the agreement is probably a section that says you promise to use arbitration for any disputes

D-bag franchise owner sees former employer working at competitor. D-bag franchise owner calls his attorney and has him file a lawsuit. Minimum wage employee can't afford an attorney to defend himself so probably doesn't even try to show up and defend himself. D-bag franchise owner gets default judgment.

Minimum wage employee gets sent to collections and/or gets his minimum wage garnished. Or just generally fucks his credit and life up just a little bit more and makes it harder to get out of minimum wage hell.

That is it in a nutshell.

Employees are minimum wage or just above minimum wage. It's not like they're going to get anything and these bastards are in it for the money.

It's just intimidation to get people to put up with a shitty job longer than they should by making them think they can't go out and get another one elsewhere.

let him put his own time and money into getting this enforced. ha.

A new chain could actively seek out sandwich making employees as part of their recruitment campaign, "the best of the best" so to speak. This dissuades that sort of campaign.

Capitalists are driven by money, yes, but that is not the only thing that drives them. Shitting on other people just because you can is also a great joy. And anyway, couldn't the plaintiff get his costs covered by the judgement?

-- Mal

I am a simulator technician- one of the most exclusive jobs in the world. There are, maybe, 5000 of us (that is a liberal guess). If I quit, I will likely work for another simulation company. I have never had to sign a no compete clause. Jesus, they make sandwiches at Jimmy John's- it isn't rocket science.

An employee who signs a non-compete agreement in order to get a job will be intimidated from applying for a higher paying job with a competitor because that employer might check with their current employer for reference if they list the job as experience.

As such the employee is more likely to remain in their current low paying dead-end job, which reduces that employer's turnover cost.

The only purpose of them is to prevent employees from taking a company's trade secrets and either giving it to a competitor, or starting their own company to compete with their old employer directly using that company's trade secrets. In the court's eyes, a non-compete agreement is bullshit until it is proven that an employee actually did either of those two things. Making a sandwich doesn't fit into either of those categories - anyone can make a sandwich. Claiming that a way a sandwich is made might be taken by a minimum wage employee and given to a competitor is laughable, and would be in court too.

Just because a company has you sign something doesn't mean it's binding. It has to be determined as reasonable. Non-competes aren't supposed to be used as threats against quitting, which is obviously what this does. Courts are very employee-friendly when it comes to non-compete agreements - they're virtually impossible to enforce minus a few specific circumstances.

It's draconian. And, hey, moms have been making sandwiches super-fast for years. Ask us how it is done.

clause was dusted off and attached to the pink slip (not kidding - they had forced all 50 supervisor to sign one 2 years prior. ).

The huge corporation did NOT need to enforce the clause. Word was out that those clauses were in all the 50+ plus people who got laid off. So, when they went to apply for similar positions, they were told they couldn't be hired for a year because of that clause, No enforcement necessary, No law suits needed. Word got out is all that was required. There are so many people they can hire, why risk hiring someone that might involve a suit?

So after a year, the experience is of little value and job prospects are practically nil.

Welcome to capitalism, where the uber rich rig the system to ensure you die very poor.

The absolute lunacy that printed out sandwich making directions (with specific weights of ingredients which must be rigidly adhered to ) implies some kind of learned skill which can by scouted by a competitor (who has their own carefully printed out directions and weights which also must be followed to the letter) could only come from some MBA nitwit.

The "financial engineers" (and is there a more chilling phrase than that one?), HR assklowns and marketing "brain wizards" serve no useful function in a sane society. They are wastes of perfectly good oxygen.

The entire project is to drain humanity out of everything so that profits can be pursued unimpeded. It is the mark of a very sick society.

I happened to work my ass off for to earn a MBA and earned it. Six weeks ago I finished my doctorate in international business. That was utter hell. So don't knock what you and others can't or won't do.

But there are as many rats as not in the B-schools, just as there in the law schools. I know as I have an Ivy League J.D.

The financial engineers are incredibly destructive and utterly unnecessary, though.

People who earn a MBA work their asses off to do so in a field they are interested it. By the way, I not only have a MBA I also have a doctorate.

All of the people in my position work from home, so we print our own docs and such. the company sent out a document for all of us to sign after a "re-structuring" (ha!). It was a 2 page doc and we had to sign and return it. It had job requirements, security stuff, etc. as well as the non-compete clause, which was VERY vague. I scanned the document and reprinted it with the small non-compete paragraph deleted. Signed it, took it to my boss who also signed it and it was sent to HQ. Never heard another word about it.

Lucky it worked.

unfortunately, how many min wage sandwich making employees would even know about this and to delete?

It reminds me that 20 and 30 years ago, when we signed for a mortgage, there was a clause to add a checking account at the same bank so that payments would be automatically removed.

F**k no! We just crossed them and initialed. No one ever gave us grief.

Non-compete clause states I can't work for a competitor until 18 months after leaving. Lol whatever motherfuckers. I still work for the one company (in 4+ years now) and concurrently worked (only worked for a few months, they got bought and I got downsized) for a competitor (well, technically not a direct competitor since they served a different clientele and for much higher membership dues).



There are no valuable trade secrets in janitorial. Making me, someone working the front desk, or in the Kids Klub sign a non-compete is just petty. Trainers? Sales? Upper management? Yeah, kinda make sense there, but the rest of us shlubs? Fuck you, corporate.

They just figure we'll all listen and do it. But it'd be hard to argue in court that a person cant do what they're trained to do for a living. I could see a restriction on taking info such as customer lists or stuff like that.

The corporate history of California going back to the beginning of the 20th century has been people telling their bosses to go fuck themselves and starting a new company the next day.

Hollywood, the aviation industry and above all else Silicon Valley just wouldn't exist as we know them otherwise. A company like Intel would have been sued out of existence in most states within weeks of starting up when the executives and senior engineers defected from Fairchild Semiconductor and to start a competitor.

Although I do know people who have been paid very, very handsomely not to work voluntarily.

A very well paid vacation!

He took a year off, then went and worked in healthcare sales in Australia and Thailand.

Good on ya, Al!

Or maybe some NFL Team? You play quarter back, and they fire you, and you can't play for any other team? That would be ridicules and the fans would be in an uproar! Sorry LeBron James, you are stuck on this team.. and if you are fired, you will never play on any NBA team again!

Reserve clause, remember?

-- Mal

and its a stupid law. But I suppose if you had enough people leaving, and working in their chosen fields, that would cost the owner a lot in court fees for suing them. They should do that. This law has to be unconstitutional and should be overturned.

... living as I do in the Philadelphia suburbs, quite literally every street corner has a small, non-chain deli or pizza place where good bad food can be bought. I'm assuming this condition does not prevail in much of the country, where chain stores are dominant.

But Chicago? Other major urban areas? I'd think there are plenty of nice places to grab a sandwich without feeding a chain-machine. It puzzles me, because of course the chains are all over the place here, but who would want a pizza from Domino's, e.g., when they could get it from a local business? What's the draw?

-- Mal

and it did exactly this.

You signed with a team, even if they cut you from the team, they still owned you and
could place you with a farm team, but you couldn't be a free agent and signed with another
team. Every team owner honored this system, even the NY Yankees.

It was this way until I think 1972. when Kurt Flood happened, which let Free Agency begin.
So for almost 100 years, the reserve clause was in affect.

didn't count then?

and if the player refuses the trade, that player couldn't play for any other team.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_clause

It was really ugly.

an ability to make a living. It would seem to me that any skill that only draws a minimum wage or there about has no proprietary component to it. Its almost an invitation to a class action suit. What is Jimmy John thinking doing this?

I've eaten there . The sandwiches are good ,but they aren't that quick. I hope someone gets a bulldog lawyer and sues.

were completely unremarkable. Nothing interesting about their options. I won't spend my money there.

Tasted just like what it was: A "chain restaurant" sub.

To enforce a non-compete clause, the company must continue to pay the employee for the duration of the non-compete clause.

If they actually have valuable trade secrets that the former employer is worried about, then the former employer will pay. If they don't, the company can't enforce it just to fuck over their ex-employee.

In those cases the company paid the full salary of the employee for a year.

Then their workers wouldn't be tempted at all to run across the street to work for sandwich shop B.

I *adore* your sig

Got a chuckle out of me.

Sure!
I introduced it as an OP
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026590295

You can use it too if you want.

There is no way to prove intellectual property theft, nor is any employer allowed to dictate an employee's entire field of work once he leaves. The only use for that stupid agreement is employee intimidation and it doesn't work on fired or laid off employees who go to work for other sandwich shops when they need to pay the rent.

It's a waste of paper. I'd love to be a fly on the wall if they ever try to sue a low wage sandwich shop worker for theft of intellectual property by staying in the same field of employment.

I fully support boycotts of any business that mandates a non-compete claus for entry level workers.
I do not give a damn if the boycott drives a "mom and pop" operation out of business. Such
clauses are not needed for entry level positions.

How in the world can making a sandwich be a protected copyrighted ability? They have some secret technique to do it faster? They will never be able to contain that.

... unlike any other fast food restaurant, so it must be a trademarked process.



They also build their sandwiches with the bread on the outside. That's practically unheard of in the industry, too.

=====================

I can't think of anything much lower than putting this kind of abuse on the lowest paid workers. This is as bad as loan-sharking.

The next time somebody brings up a "government is too big" rant, tell them about this one.

See, at Subway, they use a knife to cut the channel out of the bun. Looks like Jimmy John's has the worker dig it out with their thumb/forefinger. That would save time.

Franken's proposed legislation would ban non-compete clauses for employees making less than $15. If this legislation gets passed, then what happens if, a few years down the road, EVERYone is making $15/hr? I guess that would be a good problem to have to solve, at any rate.

====================

I really like their sandwiches. Not a great selection of sub/sandwich places where I am - will try to find a replacement though. Jimmy John Liautaud is a known Repuke wing nut. Even kills endangered species overseas. His donations all go to Repukes.

a trophy hunter of endangered species. So there's that. Got Firehouse? Their subs are GREAT! Jersey Mike's aren't bad either.

When I am over that way, I will try it though. Thanks!

at Subway before I will darken the door of Jimmy John's.

into the Feudal system.

nobody that makes less than that has any damn trade secrets.
and in a couple years, when we finally get the minimum up to $15, they will have to change this law. if they remember to.
maybe jimmy johns likes their non-compete enough to pay $15.50. it wouldnt hurt them a bit.

I would love to see them try to enforce it on a minimum wage job. Almost every other "non compete" clause in other fields hinges on expiration dates and includes severance packages.

This is after leaving their jobs, being fired and so forth?
That's completely ridiculous, and worth it for me to shun that brand.

If I can vote Franken for President, I will do it in a heartbeat.

This place, at least the crap locations in Texas, only have like two vegetables: tomato and lettuce. When Subway is kicking your butt to the curb, you have a problem. I can't for the life of me figure out why people eat at this place.

This is just another way of having that.

Another reason why I would never eat there.

in Portland OR. It was a subpar sandwich in my opinion. I wouldn't return on that basis alone but now I definitely won't. I don't know if they have any shops in San Diego, but I haven't seen one.

but if this what they do to employees then I've no reason to eat there no more. Fuck'em! Back to Publix Sandwhiches!

What an abusive tactic! Talented cooks should be able to move up to better paying jobs or use their leverage to raise their pay. I don't like the $15/hr cap on the plan, doesn't protect these workers from abuse.

I believe at some point in time I worked somewhere that I had to sign one of those, but I can't remember where it was exactly. See now that's going to drive me nuts trying to remember where (not that I wasn't 7/8th of the way there already).