Testimony by Sandeep Vaheesan before D.C. Council in Support of Upholding and Strengthening the District’s Non-Compete Protections

Open Markets Institute legal director Sandeep Vaheesan testified at the D.C. Council Committee on Labor & Workforce Development hearing on, “Non-Compete Conflict of Interest Clarification Amendment Act of 2021.”

In his testimony he urges the council not to amend the law on non-compete clauses to carve out additional workers, but to, if anything, amend the law to eliminate existing exemptions in the statute to extend its protection to all workers in the District.

Vaheesan focuses on workers’ general inability to bargain over non-compete clauses and the specious employer justification for these contracts.

From his testimony:

Whereas the harms from non-competes are real and well documented, the conventional justification for these contracts does not withstand scrutiny. Employers and their representatives assert that non-competes are necessary for protecting trade secrets, customer lists, and other valuable information. According to this theory, restricting worker departure is necessary to prevent the appropriation of knowhow by rivals or workers who want to start competing businesses. To the extent employers do need to safeguard proprietary information, they have several less restrictive alternatives for preventing unauthorized disclosures. They can use copyright and trade secret law and targeted non-solicitation agreements to ensure that their information is protected.

Download the full testimony here or see below.