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by forrestthewoods 5113 days ago
What is the contractual result for breaking a no-poach clause? Should companies inform their employees of no-poach agreements and request to be told when anyone is contacted by a recruiter from Company X? There is an on-going anti-trust lawsuit about no poach policies involving Google, Apple, Intel, Pixar, and more. How does that play into things?
3 comments
bjt 5113 days ago
The standard remedy for any breach of contract is a lawsuit for damages. You claim that the recruiter's breaking of the contract cost you X dollars, and you sue for X. If you think can convince the court the recruiter was especially naughty, ask for punitive damages too. http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/Damages

The Google/Apple/etc case is a bit different because it's between competitors, not between two parties to a given contract. Antitrust is about preventing/punishing anticompetitive agreements and behaviors.

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radley 5113 days ago
Actually "no poach" aka "non-compete" clauses are void in California:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause#Exceptions_-...

So she really had no grounds to demand and expect it.

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forrestthewoods 5112 days ago
Wait, it doesn't seem like a no poach contract with a recruiter would fall under the same laws. In California an employee is almost always free to quit and work for a direct competitor if that's what they want. However, if a recruiter signs a no poach contract stating they won't contact employees with other job opportunities for 18 months that's an entirely separate issue and doesn't seem like it would be covered by the same law.
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flyinRyan 5112 days ago
That part of the article was nonsense. First of all, you're not buying a slave. No-poach agreements are collusion and should not even be legal.

Second, agencies aren't placing people and then turning around and trying to steal them again. They just have your profile in a database, when a match comes up for a job they shoot you a mail. They don't remember that they placed you and they don't care. They make money by placing labor which has a very high fail rate so they live or die by volume. There's no time to consult a matrix to see what stupid clauses are between who, the employee will have to keep this sort of thing in mind. Remember, an employee taking a job and then leaving after a week for another $1k is going to hurt the employee more than anyone else involved so it makes sense the employee is the only one who needs to care about it.

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