{"id":185455,"date":"2014-11-12T22:39:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-13T03:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/11\/12\/welcome-to-serfdom\/"},"modified":"2014-11-12T22:39:00","modified_gmt":"2014-11-13T03:39:00","slug":"welcome-to-serfdom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/11\/12\/welcome-to-serfdom\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to Serfdom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The latest case of non-compete agreement abuse, how about a <a href=\"http:\/\/seattletimes.com\/html\/localnews\/2025004749_westneat12xml.html\">$15-an-hour janitor<\/a>?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Back in the spring, Benny Almeida was unemployed for a spell. So he took the first job offer that came his way \u2014 $15 an hour to work as a water-damage cleanup helper in Bellevue.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cAt that point what savings I had was gone,\u201d the 26-year-old says.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">But three months into his work for ServiceMaster of Seattle, Almeida got a better offer. A rival firm he had also applied to called to say it now had a job opening \u2014 paying $18 an hour.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Sounds like your typical American free-enterprise story. Except Almeida either forgot or didn\u2019t understand that he was part of the latest corporate fad in squeezing blue-collar workers: noncompete clauses even for low-wage jobs.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">To get the $15-an-hour job last spring, Almeida was required to sign a \u201crestriction on competition\u201d clause that said if he leaves, he can\u2019t work for two years for any firm doing similar work in ServiceMaster\u2019s \u201cgeographic area\u201d \u2014 which the company\u2019s lawyer told me means King, Snohomish, Island, Yakima and Kittitas counties.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">ServiceMaster of Seattle, a franchise in a $3.4 billion national corporation, now is trying to force Almeida to forfeit his $18-an-hour job at Superior Cleaning of Woodinville.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The noncompete clause would mean Almeida also couldn\u2019t work in any water- or fire-damage job, janitorial, office cleaning, window washing, floor or carpet cleaning or other job ServiceMaster does.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cServiceMaster of Seattle hereby demands that you immediately cease all employ with Superior Cleaning,\u201d reads a \u201cnotice of violation\u201d letter the company\u2019s law firm wrote to Almeida (who lives with his aunt in Lynnwood). <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m waiting for McDonald&#8217;s to claim that, &#8220;Do you want fries with that?&#8221; is a trade secret.<\/p>\n<p>Seriously, where is Madam la Guillotine when you need her?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The latest case of non-compete agreement abuse, how about a $15-an-hour janitor? Back in the spring, Benny Almeida was unemployed for a spell. So he took the first job offer that came his way \u2014 $15 an hour to work as a water-damage cleanup helper in Bellevue.\u201cAt that point what savings I had was gone,\u201d &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[975,969,972],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-employment","category-evil","category-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185455"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185455\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}