Amazon is reportedly making it difficult for its factory employees to find jobs after their done working for the e-commerce giant.
Sources inside Amazon warehouses told The Verge that all warehouse employees are required to sign 18-month non-compete agreements that ban them from working for competitors. This is also true for temporary employees, such as those who work during the Christmas period. This contract eliminates a lot of potential jobs in the employee's future, and is also unnecessarily long.
While non-competes are a normal practice with high-skill jobs, the use of them on low-skill jobs like those at warehouses is peculiar. But how can Amazon pull this off? Law professor Charlotte Garden told The Verge that the company is most likely doing this because it can take advantage of today's lack of available jobs.
"When you have a more vulnerable workforce applying for jobs, they're not going to attempt to negotiate the terms of the contract they're handed," Garden explained.
Amazon has not released comment about the practice or its reasons for placing such a ban on employees. Professor of Labor Orly Lobel told The Verge that Amazon could be using the non-competes to protect some form of office secret, or to increase an imbalance in the job market.
