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

[Chris Fowler]

The problem is that most have no clue about the details and when reading
what is in quotes on the voting machine, voting yes appears to be
positive.


On Tue, 2010-11-02 at 12:48 -0400, Lightner, Jeff wrote:
> I saw a story about this on the news.   Supposedly the reason this
> amendment is "needed" is because under current law if any clause of a
> non-compete agreement is found to be invalid then the entire agreement
> is invalid.   The idea being that the law would be changed to say that
> one invalid clause would not invalidate the entire agreement.
> 
> I'm against the amendment because it is way too vague.   While the above
> may or may not be the reason it was put on the ballot the fact is that
> there is nothing in the amendment as written that limits it to the
> above.   Even if it did limit to the above I'm not sure I'd vote for it.
> People that try to put things in agreements that aren't valid should pay
> the price.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Tim
> Watts
> Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 2010 12:03 PM
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
> Subject: Re: [ale] VOTING ALERT: Protect Your Freedom to Work!
> 
> 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.
> 
> 
> 
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