[Gllug] [OT] Non-compete clauses in employment contracts and the relative merits of unions membership.

[Wiehe, Simon]

Firstly, I believe that non-compete clauses are enforceable provided they are
reasonable.

I am going back a couple of years here to when I used to be a contractor and
this sort
of thing was a raw nerve. I was a member of the PCG (http://www.pcgroup.org)
and there 
were many discussions on this clause in contracts. The general feeling was
that they
are inferable for a 3-6 month period but 12 or 18 months were now. saying that
I 
always used the non-enforceable argument with any agent I worked with just to
try and get
it struck out :-).

And then on to unions. I used to be a union member (going back over 14 years
now) National
Communication Workers Union (NCW), Society of Telecom Executives (STE) and the
Banking, 
Insurance and Finance Union. The first took us into a strike which most of the
members did 
not actually want, they had a vote (reject and strike), got a conditional
revised offer 
which they rejected and then called a strike on the basis of the vote when
most members 
wanted the revised offer. The strike failed because it was not supported and
management 
withdrew they conditional offer so we were no better off. STE were the richest
union in 
the country and charged the highest membership. The reason it had so many
funds though
was because whenever BT had a potential strike which involved STE members, it
normally
involved NCW members as well. The STE members were the managers of the NCW
members so
BT always did a deal with the STE so their members could take the necessary
actions against 
NCW memberers if the went on strike (as is the role of managers in an
organisation. BIFU were
just plain useless IMHO and were there to service the lifestyles of the union
executive.

If you are an independent consultant looking for a trade organisation I think
you should 
look at the Federation of Small Businesses (they have a small door into
Government) or
the PCG (geared specifically at consultancies in IT and the Oil and Gas
industry). Both 
offer good benefits with the PCG having a set of standard consultancy
contracts for 
members to use as well as business insurance discounts.

And now back to the topic. The questions you have to ask yourself are:
 - Are you prepared to take the risk of possible litigation ?
 - Would the company actually go to the expense os litigation ?

The answer to the second is normally no, but depends how big they are.

Simon

PS. Sorry for the long reply.

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