News & Commentary March 8, 2023

[Omaha Steve]

https://onlabor.org/march-8-2023/

By Morgan Sperry

Morgan Sperry is a student at Harvard Law School.

In today’s News and Commentary, the FTC has extended the public comment period for its proposed ban on non-compete agreements, the CFPB and the NLRB have signed an MOU creating a formal partnership to address employer surveillance, monitoring, data collection, and employer-driven debt, Starbucks C.E.O. Howard Schultz will testify before the Senate HELP Committee, the Department of Justice has moved to block a proposed JetBlue-Spirit Airlines merger, and Alabama coal miners quietly ended one of the longest mining strikes in U.S. history.

The FTC has voted to extend the public comment period on its proposed rule to ban employers’ use of non-compete agreements by one month. In a press release posted on Monday, the FTC extended its comment period until April 19, 2023. The proposed rule would free one in five American workers—approximately 30 million people—from non-compete clauses, which restrict workers from pursuing better employment opportunities. Specifically, the rule would make it illegal for an employer to (1) enter into or attempt to enter into a noncompete with a worker; (2) maintain a noncompete with a worker; or (3) represent to a worker, under certain circumstances, that a worker is subject to a non-compete. The FTC has grounded its rule in empirical data indicating that non-compete clauses reduce competition in labor markets, thereby suppressing earnings and opportunities for all workers (even those who are not directly subject to a non-compete). The FTC notes, too, that non-compete clauses harm innovation and stifle competition in product and service markets by decreasing the flow of information and knowledge among firms.

On Tuesday, National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Rohit Chopra signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to create a formal agency partnership on the topics of employer surveillance, data collection, and employer-driven debt. Recognizing that some unfair acts risk violating both the National Labor Relations Act and federal consumer financial protection law, the MOU formally establishes collaboration between the two agencies. General Counsel Abruzzo and Director Chopra hope that new information-sharing and cross-training practices, plus agency partnership on investigations, will prevent bad actors from “escaping oversight by dodging between regulatory gaps and supervisory authorities.”

FULL story at link above.