No-compete agreements

Subject: No-compete agreements
From: geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 13:03:48 -0500

Dan Wise wondered how agencies can justify no-compete
agreements. Simple enough, if you've got a sufficiently
twisted mind. (<-- "straight line" alert) Let's say the
company can bill $100/hour and pay you $50/hour; the
numbers are out of the blue, so I'm not saying anything
about _real_ agency practices. They certainly wouldn't want
you to go to a client and offer to do the work for
$75/hour. The client wins, you win, but the agency loses
$25/hour of potential income. So they do everything in
their power to stop you from going around them. In my
books, that's restraint of trade and a flagrant violation
of various anti-trust laws, but I'm no lawyer. (Thank God.)

I don't deny that agencies serve a useful purpose for
freelancers, and that they deserve some compensation for
their work, but I think that blanket non-compete
arrangements are going way too far in that direction.

Reality check: For people who do work with agencies (I
don't because I'm a wage slave), how negotiable are such
agreements? Can you add a clause such as (for example) "if
you have no work for me, I can take my resume to another
agency down the road"?

--Geoff Hart @8^{)} geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Disclaimer: Speaking for myself, not FERIC.

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