The Morning Meeting with Al Tompkins is a daily Poynter briefing of story ideas worth considering and other timely context for journalists, written by senior faculty Al Tompkins. Sign up here to have it delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.
The Federal Trade Commission is close to banning noncompete contracts.
Those are the legal documents that media companies, especially local TV stations, force journalists to sign that keep them from working for competing stations, sometimes for up to a year. These contracts are not just for high-profile anchors, but also for producers, multi-media journalists and reporters who earn $30,000 to $50,000 a year and want to make more dough without moving to another town.
The FTC says about 30 million Americans are covered by noncompete contracts. California and Oklahoma already ban such contracts, and Maryland and Oregon do not allow them for lower-paid workers. Florida allows them to be stringently enforced.
Because non-compete clauses prevent workers from leaving jobs and decrease competition for workers, they lower wages for both workers who are subject to them as well as workers who are not. Non-compete clauses also prevent new businesses from forming, stifling entrepreneurship, and prevent novel innovation which would otherwise occur when workers are able to broadly share their ideas. The Federal Trade Commission proposes preventing employers from entering into non-compete clauses with workers and requiring employers to...
Park Filed Complaint Against President Lee Ahead of 2021 Election Jang Youngha Sentenced to One Year in Prison, Two Years Probation Confirmed The police have launched an investigation into Park Chu...