Chicago Business Litigation Lawyer Blog
Non-compete agreements have been in use in the top tiers of American companies for several years now. The idea is to protect the interests of the company by making sure that executives or other employees with trade secrets and confidential information don’t take those secrets to a competitor, where they can be used against the company. Non-compete agreements began in the big tech companies, where keeping the company’s latest developments was of the utmost importance in order for the company to be able to effectively compete in the marketplace.
Non-compete agreements impose restrictions on when and where an employee can work after leaving the company. Usually, the employee cannot go to work for a direct competitor within a certain reasonable geographical radius of the company and within a certain reasonable time frame after leaving the company. This means that an employee is generally allowed to go work for a company’s competitor, only if the competitor is located in a different city or state from the company. Often, employees can work for whomever they want wherever they want within six months to a year after leaving the company. The lag time is usually sufficient to render useless any trade secrets the employee might have.
For executives or employees who are working with trade secrets, helping to develop new products for the company, etc., it may makes sense that the company would want to protect their investment by preventing those employees from going to work for a competitor. It does not make sense for companies to require hourly employees making sandwiches to sign a non-compete agreement, yet that is allegedly the case for certain Jimmy John’s employees.
It is hard to believe that the people making sandwiches, on the bottom rung of the proverbial ladder, have any valuable trade secrets that Jimmy John’s would not want shared. Other cases of hourly, minimum-wage employees have been reported, but it is rare for a company to enforce the non-compete agreements of these employees. Jimmy John’s, on the other hand, according to the New York Times has allegedly taken steps to actively restrict the alternate employment options of its sandwich makers. The Time’s blog does say that there is no reported case of Jimmy John’s actually seeking to enforce this provision.