JAV Federalinė prekybos komisija uždraudžia nekonkuravimo sąlygas, susirėmimai su verslu neišvengiami

 

 

   „VAŠINGTONAS – Federalinė prekybos komisija (FTC) antradienį uždraudė darbdaviams sudaryti nekonkuravimo sutartis, skirtas tam, kad dauguma darbuotojų negalėtų prisijungti prie konkuruojančių įmonių, siekiant politikos tikslo, kuris yra populiarus tarp darbo jėgos, tačiau susiduria su neišvengiamu teismo iššūkiu iš verslo grupių.

 

     Priemonė, patvirtinta agentūros demokratų balsų dauguma 3 prieš 2, yra pirmas kartas per daugiau, nei 50 metų, kai FTC pareigūnai išleido reglamentą, įpareigojantį keisti įmonių konkurenciją ekonomikos mastu. Komisija istoriškai veikė, kaip teisėsaugos agentūra, tirdama atskiras įmones ir paduodanti jas į teismą dėl veiksmų ar sandorių, kurie laikomi pažeidžiančiais įstatymus.

 

     Taisyklė draudžia įmonėms vykdyti esamus nekonkuravimo susitarimus bet kam, išskyrus aukštus vadovus. Ji taip pat draudžia darbdaviams ateityje įvesti naujas nekonkuravimo sutartis su aukščiausio lygio vadovais.

 

     FTC pirmininkė Lina Khan teigė, kad ši taisyklė atkuria amerikiečių teises, kurių pasinaudojo korporacijos, įvesdamos nekonkuravimo sąlygas darbo vietoje. „Išplėšiant iš žmonių ekonominę laisvę atimamos ir visos kitos laisvės“, – sakė ji.

 

     Bideno administracija siekė 2021 m., kai Baltieji rūmai paskelbė griežtesnio antimonopolinių įstatymų vykdymo planą, užpulti nekonkuravimo sutartis. Taisyklė yra didesnių FTC veiksmų, kurie padidino darbuotojų teises antimonopolinių taisyklių laikymosi srityje, kertinis akmuo.

 

     FTC teigia, kad nekonkuravimo sąlygos pažeidžia 110 metų senumo įstatymą, draudžiantį nesąžiningus konkurencijos būdus. Agentūra teigia, kad apribojimai trukdo konkurencijai dėl darbo, todėl darbuotojams mažėja atlyginimai ir pašalpos.

 

     Ši praktika tapo labiau paplitusi ir dabar paveikia beveik 1 iš 5 amerikiečių darbuotojų. Netgi mažesnius atlyginimus gaunantys, darbuotojai, tokie, kaip restoranų darbuotojai ir plaukų stilistai, neturintys prieigos prie intelektinės nuosavybės ar komercinių paslapčių, buvo verčiami pasirašyti.

 

     Remiantis Kornelio universiteto profesoriaus Matto Marxo 2022 m. paskelbtu tyrimu, pardavimų darbuotojai, inžinieriai, gydytojai ir salonų darbuotojai yra vieni iš labiausiai paplitusių darbuotojų, kuriems daro įtaką įmonių nekonkuravimo sąlygų vykdymas.

 

     Įmonės, kurios naudojasi nekonkuravimo susitarimais, teigia, kad tai veiksmingas būdas apsaugoti jų intelektinę nuosavybę ir kitas investicijas.

 

     Galutinė FTC taisyklė įsigalios po keturių mėnesių. JAV prekybos rūmai planuoja jau trečiadienį paduoti ieškinį dėl FTC taisyklės. Ieškinyje būtų teigiama, kad FTC neturi teisinių įgaliojimų priimti taisyklę, ir būtų prašoma federalinio teismo ją pripažinti negaliojančia, šią savaitę sakė rūmų pareigūnai.

 

     „Jei jie gali priimti reglamentus dėl nesąžiningų konkurencijos metodų, tai tikrai nėra jokio JAV ekonomikos aspekto, kurio jie negalėtų reguliuoti“, – sakė Rūmų strateginės advokacijos vadovas Neilas Bradley.

 

     Valstijos tradiciškai reguliuoja nekonkuravimo susitarimus, o kai kurios valstijos juos visiškai uždraudė. Kalifornijoje nekonkuravimo apribojimų trūkumas leido talentingiems inžinieriams ir kitiems technologijų darbuotojams lengvai pakeisti darbdavį arba įkurti savo įmones.

 

     Niujorko gubernatorė Kathy Hochul pernai vetavo įstatymą, kuris būtų uždraudęs juos jos valstijoje, įskaitant Volstrytą. Tada Hochul sakė, kad teisės aktai turėtų išsaugoti nekonkuravimą kai kuriems, didesnius atlyginimus gaunantiems, darbuotojams.

 

     Viena didžiausių Volstrito prekybos grupių, Vertybinių popierių pramonės ir finansų rinkų asociacija (Sifma), praėjusiais metais FTC sakė, kad nekonkuravimo sutartys padeda finansų maklerio įmonėms ir turto valdytojams apsaugoti komercines paslaptis ir kitą jautrią informaciją nuo nutekėjimo konkurentams.

 

     „Sifma“ perspėjo, kad bankams ir kredito unijoms netaikomas FPK reglamentas ir jie galės toliau naudotis nekonkurencingumu, kas suteiks jiems pranašumą prieš kitas finansų įmones, kurioms taikomi apribojimai. Pelno nesiekiantys, sveikatos priežiūros darbdaviai taip pat yra atleisti nuo taisyklės.

 

     Nekonkuravimo sutarčių uždraudimas yra labai populiarus tarp daugelio darbuotojų, o FTC apskaičiavo, kad taikant šį režimą jų pajamos per 10 metų padidėtų 400 mlrd. dolerių ar daugiau.

 

     Mokesčių konsultantė Hikoryje, NC, Sabrina Parris savo karjeros pradžioje pasirašė nekonkuravimo susitarimą, kuris neleido jai dirbti su buvusiais klientais, jei ji paliks savo tuometinį darbdavį – apskaitos įmonę. Kai ji išvyko, tikėdamasi pradėti savo verslą, darbdavys jai priminė tą sutartį, sakė ji.

 

     Įkūrusi įmonę, kuri padėjo mažoms įmonėms laikytis mokesčių, ji atsisakė buvusių klientų, kai jie susisiekė.

 

     „Pasakiau jiems, kad negaliu su jais dirbti ir kad jie yra gerose rankose ir turėtų likti ten, kur buvo“, – sakė Parris, kuri sakė, kad ji taip pat yra „Uber“ vairuotoja naktimis ir savaitgaliais, kad papildytų savo pajamas. – "Nekonkurencija mane šiek tiek išgąsdino."

 

     FTC tradiciškai nesielgė kaip reguliavimo institucija, bent jau vykdydama savo antimonopolinės veiklos vykdymo misiją.

 

     Reguliavimo agentūros rašo taisykles, kuriomis, pavyzdžiui, bandoma formuoti verslo praktiką, reikalaujančias atskleisti teisingą informaciją arba uždrausti tam tikrus interesų konfliktus. Tačiau FTC ir Teisingumo departamentas, turintys bendrą antimonopolinę valdžią, ėmėsi vykdymo veiksmų – daugiausia civilinių ieškinių – siekdami sustabdyti elgesį, kuris, jų nuomone, pažeidžia antimonopolinius įstatymus.

 

     Prieš perimdama FTC, Khan rašė, kad toks požiūris vartotojams nepasitarnavo.

 

     Ji tvirtino, kad teismai tapo pernelyg nedrąsūs dėl griežto antimonopolinių įstatymų vykdymo ir leido monopolijoms klestėti visoje ekonomikoje.

 

     Antradienį patvirtinta priemonė leidžia išlaikyti tik dabartinius nekonkuravimo susitarimus su aukšto rango vadovais, kuriuos FTC apibrėžė, kaip žmones, uždirbančius daugiau, nei 151 164 dolerių per metus, ir kurie yra atsakingi už politikos formavimo pareigas organizacijoje.

 

     Priešingai, du FTC respublikonų komisarai pareiškė, kad agentūra perėmė valdžią, kad ji neprivalo pripažinti negaliojančiomis nekonkuravimo sutarčių visoje JAV Komisijos narė Melissa Holyoak teigė, kad FTC gali taikyti vykdymo priemones, kad nubaustų už tam tikrus antikonkurencinius nekonkuravimo susitarimus, tačiau neturėjo aiškaus Kongreso leidimo reguliuoti taip, kad praktika išnyktų.“ [1]

 

1. FTC Bans Noncompete Clauses, Setting Up Clash With Business. Michaels, Dave; Ellis, Lindsay.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 24 Apr 2024: A.1.

FTC Bans Noncompete Clauses, Setting Up Clash With Business

"WASHINGTON -- The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday banned employers from using noncompete contracts to prevent most workers from joining rival firms, achieving a policy goal that is popular with labor but faces an imminent court challenge from business groups.

The measure, approved by the agency's Democratic majority on a 3-to-2 vote, marks the first time in more than 50 years that FTC officials have issued a regulation to mandate an economywide change in how companies compete. The commission has historically operated like a law-enforcement agency, investigating and suing individual companies over practices or deals deemed to violate the law.

The rule prohibits companies from enforcing existing noncompete agreements on anyone other than senior executives. It also bans employers from imposing new noncompete contracts on senior executives in the future.

FTC Chair Lina Khan said the rule restores rights to Americans that corporations have taken by imposing noncompete clauses in the workplace. "Robbing people of their economic liberty also robs them of all sorts of other freedoms," she said.

The Biden administration pushed for a regulatory assault on noncompetes in 2021, when the White House issued a blueprint for stricter enforcement of the antitrust laws. The rule is the capstone of a larger set of moves at the FTC that have elevated the interests of workers in antitrust enforcement.

Noncompete clauses violate a 110-year-old law that prohibits unfair methods of competition, the FTC says. The restrictions hamper competition for labor, the agency says, and result in lower pay and benefits for workers.

The practice has grown more prevalent and now affects nearly 1 in 5 American workers. Even lower-wage workers such as restaurant employees and hair stylists, who lack access to intellectual property or trade secrets, have been subject to them.

Sales staff, engineers, doctors and salon workers are among the most common types of workers affected by companies' enforcement of noncompete clauses, according to research published by Cornell University professor Matt Marx in 2022.

Businesses that use noncompete agreements say they are an effective way to protect their intellectual property and other investments.

The FTC's final rule becomes effective in four months. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce plans to sue the FTC as soon as Wednesday over the rule. The suit would argue that the FTC lacks the legal authority to issue the rule and would ask a federal court to invalidate it, Chamber officials said this week.

"If they can issue regulations with respect to unfair methods of competition, then there's really no aspect of the U.S. economy they couldn't regulate," said Neil Bradley, head of strategic advocacy for the Chamber.

States have traditionally regulated noncompete agreements, with some states banning them completely. In California, the lack of noncompete restrictions has allowed talented engineers and other tech workers to easily switch employers or start their own companies.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul last year vetoed legislation that would have banned them in her state, including on Wall Street. Hochul said then that legislation should preserve noncompetes for some higher-compensated employees.

One of Wall Street's biggest trade groups, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (Sifma), told the FTC last year that noncompetes help brokerage firms and asset managers protect trade secrets and other sensitive information from leaking to rivals.

Sifma warned that banks and credit unions are exempt from FTC regulation and would be able to keep using noncompetes, giving them an advantage over other financial firms subject to the restriction. Nonprofit healthcare employers also are exempt from the rule's reach.

Outlawing noncompetes is hugely popular with many workers, and the FTC estimates that its rule would boost their earnings by $400 billion or more over 10 years.

Sabrina Parris, a tax consultant in Hickory, N.C., signed a noncompete agreement early in her career that blocked her from working with former clients if she left her then-employer, an accounting firm. When she departed, hoping to start her own business, the employer reminded her of that contract, she said.

After she started the company, which helped small businesses with tax compliance, she turned down former clients when they reached out.

"I told them I couldn't work with them, and that they were in good hands and should stay where they were," said Parris, who said she also was an Uber driver on nights and weekends to supplement her income. "The noncompete scared me a little."

The FTC hasn't traditionally behaved like a regulator, at least with respect to its antitrust enforcement mission.

Regulatory agencies write rules that try to shape business practices by, for example, requiring truthful disclosures or forbidding certain conflicts of interest. But the FTC and the Justice Department, which share antitrust authority, have used enforcement actions -- mainly civil lawsuits -- to stop conduct they believe violates the antitrust laws.

Before taking over the FTC, Khan wrote that approach hadn't served consumers well. 

Courts had become too timid, she argued, about strictly enforcing the antitrust laws and had allowed monopolies to flourish across the economy.

The measure approved on Tuesday only permits current noncompete agreements with senior executives, which the FTC defined as people earning more than $151,164 annually who have policymaking responsibilities at an organization.

In dissent, the FTC's two Republican commissioners said the agency seized power that it doesn't have to invalidate noncompete contracts across the U.S. Commissioner Melissa Holyoak said the FTC could use enforcement actions to punish certain anticompetitive noncompete agreements but lacked clear permission from Congress to regulate the practice out of existence." [1]

1. FTC Bans Noncompete Clauses, Setting Up Clash With Business. Michaels, Dave; Ellis, Lindsay.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 24 Apr 2024: A.1.

Advice

 If someone wronged you, even though you didn't deserve it, go back and make sure you deserve it.

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 The great green rivalry between China and the West

"From the snazzy seats of the E14 bus in Montevideo, Uruguay’s capital, it is hard to tell that the smooth electric machine is Chinese. Only an eagle-eyed commuter would spot the tiny window sticker bearing the name of BYD, a Chinese manufacturer. Enquiries as to passengers’ concerns about the bus’s Chinese origins elicit bafflement. They are a vast improvement on the deafening gas-guzzlers they replaced. The operator has just ordered 200 more. Thousands of similar buses glide through other Latin cities. 

But politicians in the United States fret that Latin America’s growing reliance on Chinese green technology, from electric buses to solar panels, is a problem and even a threat.

Tensions are rising because the stakes are high. The fast adoption of green technologies such as electric vehicles (EVs), solar panels and batteries is a vital pillar of efforts to halt climate change. These technologies are also an economic smash hit. In 2022 announced foreign direct investment in renewable energy globally totalled over $350bn, dramatically more than annual investments in any other sector not only that year but in decades. 

That has made green technology the latest front in the United States’ rivalry with China.

Latin America plays an outsize role in this. A world-leading 60% of electricity in the region comes from renewable sources. It boasts a wealth of the critical minerals needed to make green technologies, and is rich enough to be a serious market for them.

 China so dominates global production of solar panels, batteries and wind turbines that leaders in the United States fear they are losing the green-technology race, both globally and in their backyard. 

Other developing countries that are trying to go green while balancing Sino-US tensions should be paying attention.

China is focused on what it calls the “new three”: EVs, lithium-ion batteries and solar panels. 

In 2021 its exports of these products to Latin America already totalled $5bn. They have since almost doubled. Brazil dominates overall, but exports to the wider region are growing even faster. “China’s importance to our market is immense,” says Rodrigo Sauaia of the Brazilian Association of Photovoltaic Energy, an industry body.

Some 99% of the solar panels imported to Latin America last year were made in China. That is even more than would be suggested by China’s dominant position in solar, where it has 80% of global manufacturing capacity; in wind, that figure is more than 60%. There are more Chinese buses on the streets of Santiago, the capital of Chile, than in any other city outside China. Last year about 70% of EVs imported to Latin America were Chinese. And over 90% of the lithium-ion batteries imported to South America were, too.

China’s direct investment in green technology and construction on the continent is surging. Its energy investments suddenly switched to renewables in 2015, according to data crunched by Margaret Myers of the Inter-American Dialogue, a think-tank in Washington. It has ramped up its interest in electricity distribution and transmission. Utility deals worth $17bn accounted for about 75% of Chinese mergers and acquisitions in the past five years in Latin America. State Grid, a state-owned Chinese utility, has bought two of Chile’s largest electricity distributors and serves about half of the country’s market. After a series of acquisitions in Peru, state-owned Chinese companies are set to control the distribution of all electricity in Lima, the capital.

Other green sectors are attracting investment, too. In 2022 Chinese firms invested $2.2bn in the EV industry, 35% of total Chinese fdi in Latin America that year. The bulk of this was in EV- and battery-manufacturing in Brazil, Mexico and Argentina. In Brazil BYD has taken over a former Ford factory in the east. (The symbolism is not lost on bigwigs in Washington.) It will be BYD’s biggest hub outside Asia, initially producing 150,000 vehicles a year, with the potential to increase that to 300,000. In Mexico BYD is planning a factory of a similar size.

Many in Latin America see this as good news. Chinese solar panels and EVs are cheap and effective. Any jumpiness about surging imports is balanced by hopes that Chinese investment will lead to more green gear being manufactured locally, boosting jobs and growth. In solar panels that seems doubtful. China is so dominant and the panels so standardised that production will probably stay in China.

Processing lithium for batteries looks more likely. When in China last year, Gabriel Boric, Chile’s president, announced that Tsingshan, a Chinese metals-processing firm, would invest $233m in a Chilean plant to produce lithium iron phosphate, a compound used to make cheaper batteries. “The most important thing”, he said, is that “we will be creating value chains and transferring knowledge.” Local wind-turbine manufacturing also looks plausible.

Juicing the joules

The greatest potential for local green manufacturing is in EVs, which Brazil is trying to hasten by raising tariffs on imports. BYD’s plan to produce 150,000 EVs a year in Brazil is a big bet, equivalent to over half of the company’s global exports in 2023 and far more than the 18,000 BYD vehicles that Brazil imported that year. But Brazil is a big market, with 2.3m new vehicles registered in 2023. Only 2.5% of those were electric, but that was twice the 2022 figure. That neighbouring Latin American countries are also electrifying their fleets adds to the opportunity.

Evan Ellis of the US Army War College says the stand-off over green technology is a “civilisational struggle”. For the United States that comprises a trio of worries. The first is that Chinese green technology could pose a security threat, to the United States and others. President Joe Biden recently ordered a national-security probe into the risks posed by Chinese green technologies and warned that Chinese EVs could be “remotely accessed and/or disabled”. One fear is that they could collect data on sensitive military sites. A more extreme one is that remote access could potentially turn them into weapons.

Such a grim scenario is far-fetched, especially in Latin America. Even if such meddling were technically possible, which is far from clear, any attempt or threat to weaponise EVs would do great damage to China’s global car industry. The threat from solar panels or wind farms is even more limited. Solar panels themselves are “dumb”, and do not send data anywhere by default. For connected parts like inverters, though Chinese firms do dominate, there are many other options on the market.

Security does matter to Latin leaders, but in a different sense. “The push for cleaner energy is also a matter of national security,” says Diego Pardow, Chile’s energy minister. Diversified energy partners are important, he agrees. But even if plenty of Chile’s green technology comes from China, slashing reliance on imported gas and oil using Chile’s wind and sun reduces national-security risks because it cuts Chile’s exposure to strife in the Middle East or Ukraine, he explains.

The United States’ second fear is that Latin reliance on Chinese green technology gives China political leverage that it could use to exert pressure on anything from Taiwan to exclusive mining deals. Yet solar panels and wind turbines provide little ongoing leverage once they’re installed. Besides, Latin America boasts some 60% of global lithium resources, a handy green bargaining chip of its own. Leverage can also come from any economic ties, and the United States and Europe are far larger investors in Latin America overall than China. Though China may be moving the fastest on green technology, Europe and the United States are active, too. The biggest renewables project announced in Latin America in 2022 was an aviation-biofuels plant in Panama, which is being built by a firm from the United States. Europe, meanwhile, is hoping for a large role in green hydrogen. For Latin America as a whole, the United States is still the largest trading partner.

Some concerns about political pressure are more reasonable. Chinese ownership of large shares of critical infrastructure, such as electricity-distribution grids in Peru and Chile, is more worrying because the flow of electrons through wires is something that the operating company can easily disrupt. Unlike Europe and the United States, many Latin American countries lack an institution to assess foreign investments on strategic or national-security grounds. Still, says Mr Pardow, most of Chile’s distribution grid used to be owned by one Spanish firm. “We are more diversified than we used to be,” he notes.

Green-tech FOMO

Uncle Sam’s last worry is that firms and workers in Latin America and the United States are losing out to Chinese ones in the world-shaping green-technology industry, thanks to heavy state support in China. 

In March Janet Yellen, the US treasury secretary, said that Chinese overcapacity in green technologies “hurts American firms and workers, as well as firms and workers around the world”. Officials in Washington fret that a flood of Chinese goods will lead to deindustrialisation not just in Latin America but in every country which remains open to Chinese green-technology imports.

 The existence of China’s green-technology foreign direct investment (FDI) is evidence against this. At any rate, there are few good Western alternatives to China’s “new three”. If FDI keeps expanding, and local production comes to rival Chinese imports, anxiety about Latin deindustrialisation should ease.

The United States’ concerns about its weakness in green technologies will remain, though. They are understandable, but until its firms can reliably provide cheap, effective and large-scale alternatives to Chinese offerings, urging caution on Latin American leaders will do little good. “Alerting about risks without putting an alternative on paper is not useful at all,” says Thiago de Aragão of Arko Advice, a Brazilian political consultancy. Instead, he says, “it creates antipathy.”" [1]

1. The great green rivalry. The Economist; London Vol. 451, Iss. 9392,  (Apr 13, 2024): 43, 44.