Noncompete agreements, which restrict who employees can work for after leaving a company, have become well-established in Pittsburgh. Some local hairstylists, for example, who are unhappy with their jobs must either stay with those jobs, move to another area, or change fields entirely, throwing away years of training and experience.
Federal or state government should scrap these oppressive and restrictive contracts. California, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Washington, D.C., have already banned them. In Pennsylvania, however, noncompete agreements apply to, among others, software engineers, graphic designers, surgeons, lawyers and even hairstylists.
In a prepared statement, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce calls the contracts “an important tool in fostering innovation” to protect trade secrets, specialized employee training and client retention. But noncompete agreements also prevent people from leaving for better paying jobs and keep them tethered to business owners who ignore their best interests. Noncompete agreements have kept 30 million Americans from netting $300 billion in wage increases annually, reports the Federal Trade Commission. Preliminary finding by the FTC also shows they stifle competition and, therefore, violate federal law.
