The movement toward shielding low-wage workers from job-mobility restrictions could be gaining more bipartisan appeal, as a handful of GOP-majority state legislatures consider mirroring their Democratic counterparts’ recent efforts.
Iowa is close to becoming the first state with a Republican-led legislature to ban employee noncompetes specifically for low-wage workers. A similar GOP-sponsored proposal is pending in West Virginia, based on model legislation unveiled last July by the non-partisan Uniform Law Commission.
“There’s been a lot of attention paid to making sure that lower-wage employees are not subject to noncompetes. There seems to be broad political consensus on that,” said Michael Elkon, an Atlanta-based labor and employment attorney with Fisher & Phillips LLP.
Noncompetes, which bar employees from going to work for a competing business, are one of several types of restrictive employment contracts that businesses sometimes require employees to sign during the hiring process.
Their stated intent is to protect company trade secrets or investment in specialized training. But worker advocates, news reports, and politicians have raised concerns that lower-wage and hourly workers with no access to trade secrets are unfairly blocked from switching to better paying jobs and advancing their careers.
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