I agree that a business should be able to set policy as to employee dress/behavior. Employees of a business are agents to some degree and represent to the customers that business. That being the case, the business has a vested interest in controlling their image in their market.

Non-competes, however, deal with the employee after they leave the employ of the employer. Once they leave, that individual is no longer an agent of the company and with that loss of agency goes any claims of the employer to image. But if one allows for corporations to restrict the free flow of labor - even from one competitor to another - one is engaging in the same kind of heavy-handed market tampering we so deride when it spawns from government.

I can agree to a non-compete when it is to protect intellectual property such as the case of unique business processes or proprietary knowledge, but this is talking about minimum-wage workers and assembly line processes any customer who watches the sandwiches being made can easily derive. I just can't see the justification for a non-compete in this circumstance. And especially where we are dealing with those of limited means (resources for litigation, public awareness,etc.), and limited options (knowledge, training, etc.), I have to question what market-based mechanism would be effective feedback in such a circumstance.

In trying to figure out why Jimmy John's would do this, I can only guess that it's because they want to keep any possible new techniques their employees are coming up with. The article doesn't state what a minimum wage employee at this business learns or sees. Also, a business can choose to wave off the non-compete when the person leaves. Is Jimmy John's enforcing them?

Should a business do this? I think it depends on the industry. Should the government get involved? No. After all, if the employees don't want to get involved in a non-compete, then they can choose to work elsewhere.

Collective bargaining would work quite well, I think, as long as business has the right to form trade associations as well. Brute economics would then take over. Business owners must have the right to set certain conditions as terms of employment. For example, if I owned a bank I should have the right to demand that the men that I employ dress in jacket and tie, and the ladies not look like Saigon street walkers.

True, but my question is this: would it be okay for the legislature to pass a law stating that such non-competes couldn't be enforced? To me, the presence of the non-compete like this is in-and-of-itself a obstruction to the market. Where businesses are instigating them like this, how do you non-governmentally fight back against this?

I oppose the legislation, not so much because I favor non- competes as much as I dislike government intruding into an area that's really none of their business.