The FTC Is Right to Ban Noncompete Clauses: Betsey Stevenson

It’s easy to understand why the US Chamber of Commerce is so upset about the Federal Trade Commission’s decision to ban noncompete agreements. The problem for businesses is not that they will lose trade secrets or valuable investments in workers to competitors. It’s that they just lost bargaining power to workers — and that’s exactly what the FTC intended.

Despite the common perception that noncompete agreements are relevant only for employees who possess critical trade secrets, the reality is that they are often imposed across various industries on a wide spectrum of workers, many of whom do not handle any ...