Last week, The Verge revealed that Amazon required all warehouse employees, including temporary ones, to sign an 18-month non-compete agreement that potentially barred them from working for a variety of industries. This employment process received heat from a variety of labor-focused critics, who said that it was unnecessary and unhelpful.
However, after the media brought the controversial practice to the public's attention, the e-commerce giant decided to pull the non-compete clause from their hourly employee contracts, The Guardian reported.
"That clause hasn't been applied to hourly associates, and we're removing it," a company spokeswoman said.
While the clause may not seem like a big deal, the nature of Amazon's market status would have placed extensive limits on what the non-compete entailed.
"Amazon sells just about everything, and the clause in question prohibited workers from going to a company that 'directly or indirectly' competed with Amazon for a year and a half after their tenure. Even if Amazon never enforced the contract, it could still discourage workers from seeking employment elsewhere," The Verge reported. However, it's unlikely that Amazon would file a legal suit against such an employee if they were to break the non-compete.
Some critics argued that the practice was completely unnecessary and particularly harmful for temporary employees. If that temporary employee wished to work another temp job, the general definitions behind the non-compete makes it unclear what industries are off limits.
Employees were also reportedly required to reaffirm the contracts in order to gain access to their severance pay, which would have renewed the 18-month non-compete.
