[ale] VOTING ALERT: Protect Your Freedom to Work!

[Tim Watts]

On Tue, 2010-11-02 at 10:21 -0400, Mark Wright wrote:
> 
> 2.  I think it may be a good thing.  This amendment fixes a problem
> that the government has encountered doing business.   It may sound
> like they just want the power to over pay companies owned by relatives
> but that really is pretty hard to get away with unless you are the
> mayor.  What they want is the freedom to continue to do business with
> companies that are giving us good service. This amendment will allow
> the government to do business with companies that have non compete
> clauses in their contracts.
> "Businesses desire non compete clauses in contracts to guarantee that
> former employees, and business associates with specialized knowledge
> of trade secrets are not able to leave and create their own companies
> using their intellectual property.  This proposal gives a judge the
> unilateral ability to “blue-pencil” or limit the duration, geographic
> area and scope of prohibited activities provided in a contract or
> agreement restricting or regulating competitive activities."
> It does not limit other oversight.  
> 
Businesses can and do have non-compete clauses in GA. Currently, they
have to make a good faith effort to make them reasonable in terms of
time limits, scope, geography etc. or risk having it invalidated. What
this amendment does is remove all motivation on the employer's part to
be reasonable and thus throw additional legal hurdles in the way for
startups and innovation.

I think it's quite telling when you look at the ballot verbiage of
Amendment 1 and the actual changes it would bring compared with the
other amendments. All the other amendments pretty much use the language
of the proposed changes; amendment 1 does not. They could have worded it
like "Should the constitution be amended to allow judges to modify
certain non-competitive agreements". BTW, they've already passed a law
that implements this -- they're just waiting on the amendment to pass so
it can go into effect.

Please vote NO on #1, it's important!

Aaron, I would caution you on your rhetoric. I normally don't mind your
rants; I've developed a kind of auto-translate to extract the spirit of
them. But, as others have said, your post did nothing to help the cause.
Thankfully, this issue's pretty much a no-brainer but a dicier one could
have really blown it. You're a smart guy addressing a smart audience; if
you can't compose a rational argument to support something important
like this get someone else to do it.