Abusive contracts

[Jerry Feldman]

On 03/10/2011 01:53 PM, Derek Martin wrote:
> The confidentiality clause seems perfectly reasonable to me, to be
> honest.  The non-compete is at best questionable...  It should not be
> legal to require a contractee to limit his ability to feed his family
> after his term of employment is complete (overdramatic to make the
> point).  In some states, such clauses are unenforcable, but I don't
> believe MA is one of them.
Non-compete clauses are very common. My other friend used to work for
the contract agency that another friend was sued by. He was an employee
and was their top salesman, and he was let go, but he had to refrain
from working in the industry for two years. Today he owns his own
agency. Basically as a contractor, if I work for an agency on one job
and go to another agency for a job at another client, they cannot
prevent me from doing that according to a non-compete. If I simply want
to switch agencies while working at the same client is a different story
and it would be a legitimate violation. At Digital, I had 3 different
contracts in sequence with 3 different agencies, all at Spitbrook Road,
but they were at different cost centers. In all 3 I had non-compete and
was not in violation. But, as you mentioned, the non-compete cannot be
too broad. In my friend's case, at State Street, the 2 departments were
effectively 2 different cost centers located in the same building, but
on different floors. The agency interpreted their non-compete to mean
State Street or at least State Street Quincy, but eventually the judge
sided with my friend. I once had a VP at an agency (Modis) threaten me
and I emailed her back that there was no way I'd work for Modis again.
This was a case where Modis had acquired an agency that I had worked
with before, and over my contract most of the older people had left. I
was near the end of my contract and I wanted to find out the official
end date. This was a contract at HP where the HP contract administrator
was not HR, and HR never heard of me. In any case, at that time I had a
number of potential jobs. I could have easily renewed for another year
but I was bored as an HP person at Raytheon.

--=20
Jerry Feldman <gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
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