That's called "garden leave" and it's completely different from non-compete agreements as discussed by this bill.
The terms are used somewhat interchangeably in colloquial use, because (at least as of now) the distinction isn't meaningful for most people. The point is that garden leave isn't targeted by this bill.
That is not true - there are four criteria for non-competes to be valid in NY, and payment for the duration is not one of them.
> I don't think that is true, or at least I have not seen that anywhere. My understanding is this bill removes any kind of non-competes.
There are two bills - one of them requires payment for noncompetes.
The second bill would allow for garden leave aka compensated non-competes. It just codifies the "don't try any non-compensated/good faith aspect".
So, it's conceivable that an ex-employee could receive 6 months severance in trade for a non-compete of that length, but I doubt it's very popular.
Why is this true? If someone is making $200k and leaving to make $350k, an employer may well be able to afford the $100k for 6 months to prevent them from immediately handing over IP, but not be able to match the $350k their new employer is offering.
> So, it's conceivable that an ex-employee could receive 6 months severance in trade for a non-compete of that length, but I doubt it's very popular.
It's quite popular in finance. Also, it's not a one time severance, its paid as a standard paycheck. A firm might "release" someone from their non compete while it is still active (basically saying it's no longer active and we are no longer paying you).
>an employer may well be able to afford the $100k for 6 months to prevent them from immediately handing over IP
Presumably there are other restrictions to just handing over IP but at least some of the reasoning for non-competes is that you can't really restrict the transfer of a lot of know-how even if they don't share corporate strategy decks.
Sorry, I worded that poorly. I meant companies could keep the ability to impose non-competes if they originally compensated employees who were let go.
I know it gets muddled when it comes to employees moving around for increased pay, but non-competes aren't supposed to be a mechanism for holding down salaries. They're only intended to protect vital corporate secrets that, if they were released, would be so costly to the company that they'd risk bankruptcy. The value of those secrets would likely be enough that many competitors would be hesitant to hire those employees because they might fear opening themselves up to future litigation for patent infringement or IP or whatnot.
The fact that many HR departments apply them to every single rank and file employee and don't explicitly define what constitutes a direct competitor or what explicit activities/information are protected by the NC is why they're a pretty useless legal tool in most circumstances.