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Labor & Employment

Cleaning worker who got new job with $3-an-hour pay raise faces possible suit over noncompete pact

Benny Almeida admits he saw a noncompetition provision in paperwork he signed when he got a $15-an-hour cleaning job with ServiceMaster of Seattle earlier this year.

But he didn’t think much about it, figuring the boilerplate language didn’t apply to him. And, when another company contacted him and offered to pay him $18 an hour to do cleaning work there, he jumped at the chance to get a $3-an-hour raise, columnist Danny Westneat writes in the Seattle Times.

ServiceMaster, however, asserts that it has the restrictive language in its documents for a reason, and it has threatened legal action against Almeida if he doesn’t give up his new job. The noncompetition provision bans employment at any company that does cleaning work in Seattle’s King County and other nearby counties for a two-year period after a worker leaves ServiceMaster, the article explains.

And ServiceMaster is far from the only employer that restricts workers this way: A camp counselor and a hair stylist are among those who have lost jobs over such restrictions.

Attorney Brian Boice, who represents the company, told Westneat the noncompete clause is intended to prevent ServiceMaster from training employees only to see their efforts benefit competitors.

Almeida says he didn’t get any training there.

His new boss, CEO Larry Weinberg, of Superior Cleaning, says he thinks such provisions are “just taking advantage of blue-collar workers.

“It’s like we’re going back to the feudal societies of the 12th century, where the vassals are indentured to their corporate lords,” Weinberg continued. “We’re still in America, right?”

Related material:

Carter Ledyard & Milburn: “Contractual Restraints on Employee Conduct”

Kroger Gardis & Regas: “Employment Non-compete Agreements: Disfavored Does Not Mean Not Enforceable”’

University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law: “The Growing Disfavor of Non-Compete Agreements in the New Economy and Alternative Approaches for Protecting Employers’ Proprietary Information and Trade Secrets”