I feel a simpler solution(given many American politicians hatred of worker rights) would simply be that you have to pay any employees bound by non compete clauses for the period of the non compete clause.
And they should be paid for 8-10 hours a day, 7 days a week - the non compete clause prevents them from working for a “competitor” every day of the week.
That will quickly get rid of non competes that aren’t actually necessary for anything other than wage suppression.
People get around that by splitting pay into salary and bonus. Then they just pay salary during the non-compete.
Other fun things are enforcing the noncompete at the employer's discretion. You never know if you're out for a month or a year and they can change their mind mid way through.
Bonuses also make pay lumpy, so employees wanting to quit have to wait for the next bonus date or walk away from X% of their income. Bonuses are also often late, so X is never 0 no matter when you quit.
The median in the sibling comment wouldn't work because unless bonuses are paid monthly the median will just be the base salary, so you'd have to do mean.
you could tailor it as appropriate, but also there should be legislation that limits the ability to call "bonuses" bonuses rather than regular income - if nothing else I believe withholding on bonuses is 50% vs. a sane rate that is closer to what you'd be paying if you're on a minimum-is wage job.
Bans are a big hammer and have unintended consequences in areas not given adequate consideration.
Requiring payment for the duration of the non-compete is perfect. You can tweak the specific requirements up/down as problems arise.
In most practical situations, requiring payment (of almost any amount) will eliminate non-competes, because employers generally don't like paying for labor they can't use.
Requiring employers to pay for non-competes will be functionally equivalent to a ban. Nobody in their right mind will pay tens of thousands of dollars to enforce one.
Not true. This is called "garden leave" in the financial industry and is quite common. I believe the theory is that a lot of a trader's knowledge becomes obselete quite quickly, and it is cheaper to pay a former employee for a year or two then to let them use their strategies at a competitor.
(I disagree with the downvotes here - this is a reasonable position if you have no context)
In practice, non-competes that pay out 200k+/yr are quite common in finance (think firms like 2 sigma, Jane Street). They will pay to keep people from going to competitors, mainly to keep their strategies and implementation details reasonably protected.
so you make it their median income for the past X months, which I had considered a given.
I also don't mean in response to a company enforcing it. A company would be required to pay that amount for the period covered. The employee could choose to offer them an out if the found a much better paying job, but that would necessarily not be at the discretion of the company.
I agree. Non-competes should be seen as a direct contradiction of antitrust laws.
It's a blatant violation of freedom and it hurts the economy.
It's wrong regardless of skill level. If the worker is skilled, then it is their right to choose what they do with it. If investors have the right to invest their capital in two competing companies at the same time (or hundreds of competitors; as it happens when they invest in stock indexes like S&P500), then definitely a worker should be allowed to work for two competitors at the same time.
Workers should be allowed to put themselves in positions of leverage using their skills as a bargaining tool.
The problem is that people see the noncompete clause, and they're told about the non-compete clause, most people do not know/understand that it isn't enforceable.
I have had noncompete clauses in my employment contracts in CA, where they are not enforceable. I know that they're not, but I work in tech where must people are aware of bullshit like this being attempted.
Thing is that people should accept a salary that covers the conditions in a contract, including non-compete clauses. Sadly most people don't recognize this, so it seems coercitive action like the one you propose is needed.
How is coming up with regulation around non-compete clauses (and then further regulation attempting to close loopholes such as the ones mentioned by sibling comments) simpler than just outlawing them?
Most people don’t know whether they’re enforceable. Businesses will do anything they can to intimidate people and simple unenforcement doesn’t really do much.
There are a few positions where non-competes are understandable. It is easier to carve out strict guidelines for having a none-compete than it is to exempt low-wage workers or have a comprehensive list of things that qualify for a non-compete.
So instead, make non-compete clauses really unattractive for your average employee. This would include things like paying the average wage over the last year, including any bonuses (or paying the average bonuses or prorating them another way), continuing to pay benefits such as health insurance contributions so the employee doesn't pay more, and things like that. I'd even be willing to put a penalty so the company would have to pay a bit more if their pay rate doesn't meet the industry standard in the area.
How many low wage workers are aware that a non-compete clause is not enforceable in CA? Many contracts have it present, and businesses like to call attention to them, making it perhaps non-obvious that they are meaningless?
Sure. But how do your regulations solve that? Presumably businesses would still be free to not mention the pay requirement in the contract. And even though they'd be obligated to actually pay if it came down to it, many people wouldn't be aware of that — bringing us back to square one.
You could require them to mention it, but that's just a more complicated version of banning it outright.
The difference is the matter of liability. In the regulation case, a business found to be in arrears could be hit with a very large judgement. On the other hand, if non-competes were simply banned and employees were unaware of the law, they could still suffer under the chilling effect of an unenforceable clause in their contract. To then discover the problem later and show damages in court would be much more difficult.
Until you get a class action law suit on the grounds, also (in light of your comment - companies that are intentionally screwing people are going to continue to screw them hoping to be ahead on balance) I'd add significant penalties for delayed payments.
Yes, and you could make that rule even simpler. Minimum price for a noncompete is $1000 a month until cancelled. (Picked as a round number; could be different.)
$1000/mo is nothing, it has to be tied to actual income, or some minimum clamp, which ever is higher.
Otherwise you get something like $4k/mo in the middle of Alabama, or $1k/mo in SF one of which is gratuitous, the latter is not enough to pay rent.
If you made it $10k/mo it would be more reasonable.
Just having a minimum and so a forced cost to NCs isn't enough, because you have to compare it to the cost savings it implies.
Take my $1k/mo in SF concept (noting that noncompetes are already not enforceable in CA). That isn't enough to pay rent, so it doesn't matter if you're guaranteed that income when you leave, because its not enough to live on. That means despite 1k obviously being more than 0, from a NC victim's PoV there isn't one - they cannot afford to quit, so their wages can still be easily suppressed.
Also don't base it on a fixed number as a minimum. It has to automatically track inflation.
A good start would be: the GREATER of the 75th percentile of wages for a given job category, and if multiple possible categories, the highest paying one that COULD apply OR the average take home pay over the last [3 years or during the time worked if shorter].
Yes, it's a minimum. Like with minimum wage, the exact number could be different (or raised over time) and many people could negotiate something higher. But even if too low, it would establish that noncompete agreements aren't free.
Many republican politicians have demonstrated contempt for low income workers, so this would not mean "regulating employment contracts" but rather saying that you have to pay for the full extent of a contract.
This framing makes it easier to maintain the image of hating unions/perks/whatever, but is also simpler to implement: there are legitimate reasons that you may not want high level/executive members to not work for your competitors. Whether or not you agree with that is moot: there are enough lawyers in the legislative branches to believe that it's necessary. A law like this would not be an outright ban, but rather would result in companies reducing their use of NCs to just those employees where the information that had was actually valuable.
Currently NCs have no downside for a company, so there is no reason you would ever not use one: They allow suppression of fair market wages, and literally have no associated cost. This would mean that there is: You want to put a 12 month NC on your janitors? Well you now have to pay for a 12 month vacation. Immediately - NC clauses don't say you have to work for X months for the NC to come into effect. If you work for a company for a week, you are bound to an N month NC, and so a law like this would require a company pay for that time - again, making a company actually think about whether an NC is actually necessary.
None of the arguments in favor of noncompetes are convincing. There are legitimate downsides to getting rid of noncompetes, but there are solutions for all of them, e.g. using NDAs to protect trade secrets.
Some say eliminating noncompetes would hurt businesses, but consider that California banned noncompetes back in the late 1800s (yes, really) and has the largest economy of any state.
When low-wage workers are involved, noncompetes are a form of coercion pure and simple.
Ah yes, the much-ballyhooed "corporate secrets" issue.
Trust me, no company does things so uniquely that one employee's knowledge escaping into the wild would bring it down. And if it would, they've got other problems.
This is absolutely untrue. Trade secrets are hugely important to many businesses, hence the widespread existence of corporate espionage. It is not unheard of for a particular manufacturing process (or part thereof) to have a commercial value of hundreds of millions of dollars; the example that springs to mind is Dupont vs Kolon.
If a junior employee on low wages has access to trade secrets then you're doing something terribly wrong, but it is entirely normal for e.g. industrial chemists, food technologists and manufacturing engineers to know extremely valuable secrets about the companies they work for. It is similarly normal for them to be offered extremely generous severance packages tied to a strict NDA.
The software industry is far from unique in the use of (largely legitimate) NDAs and non-competes for senior employees with extensive access to proprietary knowledge. Conneticut's concerns are about non-compete clauses being used illegitimately as a means of reducing churn for junior employees, which is a very different matter.
We have patents, copyright and trade secrets (e.g. Coke recipe). That should cover it. Depriving people of their primary means of making a living is quite frankly at best indentured servitude but is really in-human.
Can you imagine if a doctor was prevented from practicing medicine for 2 years after leaving a hospital? or an Architect? No. This is just bullying.
And while we're at it, how about we deal with companies taking ownership of employee ideas, projects etc that occur outside of work?
For a nation supposedly focused on entrepreneurship and individualism, we allow corporations to get away with a lot of behavior designed to stifle innovation. If a developer makes an application entirely on their free time and using their own systems, it is absurd for a company to expect the rights to that IP.
We can imagine all day long, just like we can imagine terrorist attack scenarios. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to expend state resources to prevent our imaginary scenarios, even if some of those scenarios will indeed come to pass.
This isn't a philosophical debate. This is an empirical debate. Non-competes have both pros and cons, and empirical studies suggest the pros are exaggerated and cons under appreciated. They're also not the only tool in the toolbox. For example, there are NDAs, trade secrets, and tortious interference, among others. Compensation and other incentives can be restructured.
Finally, your scenario only begs the question: so what? For the sake of argument, let's assume that it's somehow unfair to the original employer. What about the customers? Why is it fair that they've lost the option of working with a guy they like, probably for less money? There are two sides to the coin. That's why I said it's an empirical question: we can work out which option produces the better outcome overall, and the facts strongly suggest the best outcome is the world where non-competes are generally unenforceable.
One of the biggest and last remaining areas of productivity growth in modern service economies is putting people to their most productive task. There are huge structural inefficiencies that result in person doing task A when they'd be much more productive doing task B. This is much more of a problem in a service economy than a manufacturing economy. And one source of this inefficiency, and an increasingly common source at that, is non-compete agreements.
> I can easily imagine a sales guy leaving for the competitor and taking half of the client base with him. This may kill the company.
That doesn't seem to happen in California where noncompetes are banned. This is one of those things that seems like it might be a problem but doesn't actually happen very often.
Then the company clearly isn't paying him his full value. If the client base is loyal to him rather than the company then the company is just stealing value from him.
Then, the company should pay the sales guy the fair market value his contact database? I mean... this is not rocket science. Only someone supporting a large, overarching government to enforce these non-competes can possible see them as a good thing.
Didn’t Ross Perot leave IBM because they changed his commission schedule because he was so ludicrously good at sales? I can’t find a source for that particular story quickly but it lines up with his Wikipedia article.
> After he left the Navy in 1957, Perot became a salesman for IBM. He quickly became a top employee (one year, he fulfilled his annual sales quota in a mere two weeks)[10] and tried to pitch his ideas to supervisors, who largely ignored him.[11] He left IBM in 1962 to found Electronic Data Systems (EDS) in Dallas, Texas, and courted large corporations for his data processing services. Perot was refused 77 times before he was given his first contract. EDS received lucrative contracts from the U.S. government in the 1960s, computerizing Medicare records. EDS went public in 1968 and the stock price rose from $16 a share to $160 within days. Fortune called Perot the "fastest, richest Texan" in a 1968 cover story.[12] In 1984 General Motors bought controlling interest in EDS for $2.4 billion.
This doesn't happen as often as you'd think. Most good salespeople jump to companies that are in adjacent but not directly competitive markets. That way they can leverage their client base without coming off as disingenuous by pitching a product they were saying was crap last week.
This is a free-market capitalist economy no? Too bad. Either pay your sales guy better so they won't leave, or give your customers a better deal so they won't switch.
I firmly believe that prohibiting things is rarely a good idea.
Just require a business to keep paying an employee his salary and benefits during the non-compete. A business has a secrets to guard. An employee has a family to feed. All is fair.
> I firmly believe that prohibiting things is rarely a good idea.
It depends on how you frame the issue. Banning non-competes only prohibits courts from enforcing those terms of the contract. In other words, it removes an element of state coercion.
The rationale for state enforcement of contracts is to promote the operation of free trade. It's become quite clear that in the vast majority of situations, even as between savvy economic agents, non-competes substantially restrain the operation of free markets. They're a net loss. Why use state coercion to such an end?
Given the known facts, rather than add a bunch of exceptions limiting enforcement it's better to reverse the default rule--that is, switch from default enforceable to default unenforceable--and add affirmative exceptions for the particular situations where we know they work well. California has non-competes, they're just limited to a very small set of circumstances.
Another way to look at it is that the government isn't prohibiting anything, it just isn't enforcing things just because they happen to be written down in some contract.
Or you could frame the enforcement of the non-compete as the government prohibiting people from freely using their labor.
I think it's not so bad that when Hal asks the government to give him the money that he says he was promised, the government just tells Hal he was a fool to expect anything from that promise. Or course that isn't a universal, there are things in contracts that absolutely should be honored, the point is that you figure out which ones as a society rather than blindly enforcing anything and everything.
...and stipulate that the employee may work for any non-competing entity while still being paid by their old employer. This way the employee can make even more than their original wage, to offset the facts that they aren't being allowed to work in what is likely the job they'd find most fulfilling, and they aren't making as much career progress while working in a different field.
The government is not prohibiting non-competes, 'outlawing' contracts means that the government will not enforce them. That is all. You are free to sign anything, you just won't be able to enforce it, but I mean, if you get a thrill up your leg forcing your employees to sign it, then by all means continue. This is like how it is perfectly legal to sign a contract selling your future labor for a fixed price. In fact, you could go do it right now with your best friend! But good luck getting the government to enforce that contract.
Ultimately, this is not 'prohibiting' anything; this is just stepping out of the free market, which is a good thing.
For example, saying the government 'prohibits' non-competes in this arrangement is like saying the government 'prohibits' conversion to Christianity. However, there is no law stating that a person cannot sign a contract with his pastor saying he is now Christian and will remain so until he dies. That is perfectly within both of their rights. What they cannot do is ask the government to enforce that contract, but that doesn't mean it's prohibited... it just means it's legally useless, the way non-competes should be.
All that keeps these unenforceable contracts 'viable' is shame or large cultural organizations (like a church). For example, some professions start professional organizations that establish rules for members, and then the organization markets itself so that people know only to trust professionals belonging to that org (like realtors). If that org decided that there ought to be restrictions around how members conduct themselves with regards to competition and kicked out members who broke this taboo, then fine... have at it! But, the government is unnecessary ere.
Ok then. If you oppose prohibiting things, then you should also agree that it is a bad idea to prohibit an employee from breaking any and all non compete clauses, with zero consequence.
I agree. Let's get rid of this prohibition of an employees ability to break these agreements for any reason at all.
These are probably functionally equivalent for most employees... and especially the low-level employees that the article is talking about.
Plus, there are real downsides to your approach. It puts the onus on the employee to collect from the employer, which is best-case arduous and worst-case more expensive than it's worth with most of the money going to a billboard lawfirm anyways.
Your approach might make sense in the mid six figures and up, but for low-wage or even low to mid middle class workers, outright nullification would be way more effective.
Okay, so instead of letting the employee advance in their career, possibly earn more money because of increased responsibilities or skills, you want to pay them to sit idle? How does that help anyone?
Anyway, isn't that just prohibiting a non compete without compensation for potentially lost income? I mean any law is arguably a prohibition from the right perspective.
About time. IMHO non-competes are inappropriate for anyone outside of C-level executives (who are well compensated for accepting such terms). For low-wage workers non-competes are just pointlessly cruel.
Non-competes should be illegal for C-level execs too. It's a huge overreach of government to give corporations a venue in which to seek redress of this grievance. It's ridiculous. The government should not be involved in private agreements meant to micromanage people's lives.
At the high end, the typical CxO golden parachute that can be equivalent to several years of pay. At the low end, additional stock options or bonuses at the time of signing.
Either way, an incoming CxO has a lot more negotiating leverage (and usually experience) to ask for such things than fresh graduate looking for his first job. Low wage employees usually have no negotiating leverage at all and must accept the contract as-is or remain jobless.
Edit: I'm definitely not against banning non-competes for everyone. But a candidate for a C-level executive position is much more likely to have the resources and the knowledge to negotiate fair concessions or compensation for accepting a non-compete.
So you want noncompete. That's fine. But then it should work both ways. You don't want me to compete with you. Well, I don't want you to compete with me either. So for one year after I leave the company I am not allowed to work for your competitors and you are not allowed to hire my competitors (workers with the same skill set) on the same position. Deal?
What do people and politicians in right-to-work states think of non-compete clauses? Aren’t these workers being prevented from working the jobs they can get using the skills they’ve acquired in a similar way?
California has prohibited non-competes since forever. And by 'prohibit' I mean, they refuse to enforce them. I've signed many non-compete agreements, and you know what -- they don't mean anything. Might as well use them as toilet paper.
Just burn the whole "non-compete" thing with fire nationwide as far as I'm concerned. Basically mandate that if a person is subject to a non-compete, she needs to be paid the pre-departure salary and bennies for the duration of the non-compete. Essentially, your noncompete becomes a yearlong Hawaii vacation. I'd totally go for that. Some employers, in cases where non-compete is justified, would too. And where it's not justified, fuck them with a cactus.
This is a step in the right direction - my understanding is though that most non competes aren't enforceable to begin with, even outside of California.
Are you aware that the Federal Reserve intentionally sets rates as a function of US economic policy to have a slight scarcity of employment? This is not a conspiracy theory. It is part of the defined terms of the Fed.
With this is mind, workers at the low end of the pay scale will, by result of US policy, never have significant negotiating power.
To me at least, its feels reasonable that if the government is intentionally preventing low wage workers from having a reasonable ability to negotiate, then the government should also provide minimal protections for those workers.
Would you instead prefer that the Federal Reserve be instructed to allow for a scacity of workers, causing significant inflation, in order to give all workers at all levels significant negotiating power?
The situation is intentional. It is either A or B. Either you have workers at the low end with little negotiating power, or you have high inflation.
This is an interesting perspective I had never considered. Are there similar implications for other levers of adjusting low-wage bargaining power like when a neighboring city raises its minimum wage?
> In setting monetary policy, the Committee seeks to mitigate deviations of inflation from its longer-run goal and deviations of employment from the Committee's assessments of its maximum level. These objectives are generally complementary. However, under circumstances in which the Committee judges that the objectives are not complementary, it follows a balanced approach in promoting them, taking into account the magnitude of the deviations and the potentially different time horizons over which employment and inflation are projected to return to levels judged consistent with its mandate. [1]
Employment is maximized within the limitations of excessive inflation and vice versa. It is well established that a scarcity of workers has a direct, measurable effect on inflation. Therefore, one could conclude that it would be impossible for the Fedral Reserve to allow for a significant scarcity of workers, which is required for low wage workers to have meaningful leverage in negotiations, as it would voilate the mandate to maintain stable prices(inflation) as set forth in the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 [2]
To elaborate on this a bit. This it not so much a direct action of the Federal Reserve to create a scarcity of workers, as much as it is a result of a scarcity of workers causing inflation. That inflation would force the Fed to raise interest rates. Those rate hikes would slow the economy and would result in there no longer being a scarcity of workers.
The balance of the Federal Reserves two manadates, maximum employment and stable prices, results in about 4.25% unemployment(a slight scarcity) and 2% inflation(stable enough prices).[3] That is our current comporomise between stable prices and maximum employment.
The Federal Reserve manages inflation through credit. Inflation is used to reduce the value of fiat. Reducing the value of fiat requires you be able to invest to overcome inflation, or work more to recoup what's been artificially devalued.
Ergo, the Federal Reserve is economically coercing people to work who might otherwise not need to, or who might prefer to work less. "Maximizing employment". This would be fine with sane labor protections (a reasonable living minimum wage, minimum PTO/vacation/sick days, maternity/paternity leave, etc), but is disastrous without them. This is what happens when you maximize for employment and GDP versus quality of life.
This goes for most people not just low wage workers. Even people that have good retirement funds don't want to break into them and so it's not necessarily easy to turn down jobs.
For high demand positions it's not necessarily a matter of turning down the job.
As a tech worker, I've had success in negotiating contract amendments to limit the scope of non-competes or overly broad IP assignment clauses. Hiring takes a lot of time, and many employers are willing to budge on contract terms to save the expense/hassle of starting the recruiting process from scratch.
Obviously this is only possible if you work in an industry where you're sufficiently in-demand and thus have some negotiating power.
Well its true that you have some negotiating power and much more than low wage workers usually however there is still a power imbalance.
For my contract work I have on multiple occasions pushed back on non-competes and overly broad IP. My success has been mixed. On one occasion there was a non-compete and it was a high profile contract that I didn't want to lose so I felt like I had to go along with it.
The last time a non-compete came up I tried hard to argue against it but the guy wouldn't budge. He seemed to think he needed it to keep me working for him. I guess part of the problem there is that I just don't want to drop this startup that I have put so much time into.
On multiple occasions I have found that I had to insist on overly broad IP assignment clauses being removed from contracts. I have been successful in those cases. Basically what they try to say, depending on how you interpret it, is that all work you do even in your spare time, is owned by them. I have been able to change that to clarify that they own only work that is directly related to the project and non-core stuff can be open source and unrelated projects are my own.
I've been a low wage employee, and an employer of low wage employees. The deals are always negotiable. Clauses like non-compete for low skill workers are a throwaway item anyway, it's not like they're going to sue you over it. Only rich people are worth suing.
I enjoy signing non-competes, I just think the government should not have any power to enforce them, since I believe in limited government. But, I love agreeing to things that mean nothing! It's fun, you should try it sometime.
Like my wife and I agree that we will never divorce, ever. In fact, we've formalized that by being married in the church. We had a giant ceremony with witnesses in which we promised it. We swore on the Bible, etc. It was tons of fun! Should the government have any ability to enforce that? Of course not. That's ridiculous.
Why would the employer still choose to hire you after you refuse to sign? Everyone else signed with no complaint. Clearly you plan to learn our secrets then hand them to our competitors.
> Why would the employer still choose to hire you after you refuse to sign?
You'd know why if you've hired low wage people (I have). Finding one who'll show up sober on time and do the work without needing micromanaging is gold, and you're not going to lose him over a stupid, and likely not enforceable, non-compete.
Workers are not an undifferentiated mass of interchangeable cogs.
Haven't you ever been a broke college grad looking for 3 months with no luck? I'm not exactly on the market right now, but there was a time when I'd take any offer, and making a principled stand over something like NDA/Non-Compete was simply out of the question for me. (And I felt strongly about it, but so did my parents who were growing quite tired of paying to keep me alive, and understandably.)
And what if the next job offer also requires a Non Compete?
You may go all the way through interviewing and accepting the offer, even until you show up on the first day before you find out they require you to sign this piece of paper.
Your options at that point are: (1) don't sign it, don't say anything about not signing it... (2) make a big deal about not signing it, maybe you even ask for more money because this was never part of the deal... (3) walk out.
The point is that after months of job searching and long, involved hiring processes, not everybody is at liberty to "just say no." You're looking for a job because you needed one.
Now sure, they may be the ones hiring because they need you just as badly, but you'll rarely be in a position to know that for sure.
> you show up on the first day before you find out they require you to sign this piece of paper.
So ask them as part of "accepting the offer" to see the contract, rather than later. It's a bit foolish to move to another city for a job without knowing what the contract is.
> they may be the ones hiring because they need you just as badly, but you'll rarely be in a position to know that for sure.
And they don't know if you'll walk away, either. Unless you act like a victim when talking to them, of course.
Essentially, if you act like a victim, you'll become one. It's just like dating - she's going to walk all over you if you act all needy and desperate.
You're not going to die if you don't get that one job in the entire US.
If you're a high demand employee, this often works. If you're a low wage employee, it won't.
I'm almost always able to negotiate my contract now. At my most recent job I successfully added exceptions about IP ownership, side work I'm allowed to do etc...
But when I was in college and I worked for Geek Squad you either signed the terms they gave you or you walked.
> you either signed the terms they gave you or you walked.
Did you try to negotiate, or did you just assume? I've been given "take or leave it deals", walked away, and had them come running out after me as I was getting in my car.
(Of course, I knew what I was asking for was perfectly reasonable, too.)
I asked. Also I was a supervisor later on and did plenty of hiring myself.
The store level employees you are interacting with have no authority to change anything--there isn't even a process in place to contact someone with the authority to make changes.
And they should be paid for 8-10 hours a day, 7 days a week - the non compete clause prevents them from working for a “competitor” every day of the week.
That will quickly get rid of non competes that aren’t actually necessary for anything other than wage suppression.