El Tiempo Latino – It’s Time for Latino Workers to Rise Up Against Non-Competes

Reporter Karina Montoya shows how non-competes can disproportionally affect Latino workers in different sectors.

In 2017, Michael, a single father living in Florida, found a new job at a bank as a security guard, after having resigned his previous employer due to a family emergency. A few months into the new job, he was fired. Almost a decade earlier, a textile factory manager named Keith in North Carolina switched jobs at a rival company that offered him a better salary. A few months later, he was fired, too. Both had one thing in common: their previous employers made them sign non-compete clauses as part of their contracts. Their new employers were notified and told to let the employees go or risk a lawsuit.

Non-compete clauses prevent workers from joining a competing employer or starting a new competing business after they leave their post for an established period of time that can last for months and within a certain geographic area. Earlier this month, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) — an agency with authority to define and prohibit unfair methods of competition — proposed a federal ban on these agreements, which will impact payroll workers as well as freelancers. The proposal would also invalidate current non-competes, releasing an estimated 30 million Americans from the restrictive contracts.

Non-competes are commonplace in the industries that employed Michael and Keith, which also happen to employ many Latino workers. In security services, for example, Latinos represent 17 percent of workers, while in the textile industry — anything from apparel to leather manufacturing — that figure is 28 percent, according to the latest data by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

 Read full article in English here.