{"id":5040,"date":"2015-06-11T13:21:17","date_gmt":"2015-06-11T13:21:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom.chainstoreguide.com\/?p=5040"},"modified":"2015-06-11T13:21:17","modified_gmt":"2015-06-11T13:21:17","slug":"not-so-fast-jimmy-johns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/2015\/06\/not-so-fast-jimmy-johns\/","title":{"rendered":"Not So Fast Jimmy John's!"},"content":{"rendered":"

To this day, I can remember the excitement I felt while filling out paperwork for my first job during my senior year of high school. Even though I was only going to be a minimum wage employee, who worked a meager twenty hours a week seating guests at the local seafood restaurant, I finally had a job that didn\u2019t involve a lemonade stand. This was my first real<\/em> job.<\/p>\n

In October 2014, a well-known sandwich chain added a few extra pages for their employees to sign at franchisee-owned locations across the United States. The pages included a non-compete agreement stating that all Jimmy John\u2019s<\/strong> employees cannot work at a competing sandwich shop for a period of two years following their departure. To be more specific, a \u201ccompeting sandwich shop\u201d is one that earns nearly 10% or more of its revenue from sandwiches, which can include independent and local chains, and is located within three miles of any Jimmy John\u2019s location.<\/p>\n

As one might imagine, many have found this to be quite unreasonable.<\/p>\n

According to Chain Store Guide\u2019s<\/strong> Chain Restaurant Operators<\/a> database, there are over 2,100 Jimmy John\u2019s locations spanning across 40+ states. While 2,100 locations doesn\u2019t sound like it would affect an employee much, when an employee signs a Jimmy John\u2019s non-compete agreement, they are essentially prohibited from working at one of the nearly 43,700 Subway <\/strong>locations, Quiznos\u2019<\/strong> 2,100 stores, Jersey Mike’s<\/strong> nearly 850 locations, or even one of Which Wich<\/strong>\u2019s 320+ stores. The Huffington Post writes that this non-compete is \u201coppressive\u201d and is \u201ceffectively blacklisting [former employees] from whole cities for a period of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Non-compete agreements are nothing new to the business world, but aren\u2019t they usually signed by high-ranking executives or employees who have access to proprietary information or trade secrets? \u00a0(You know, ones like the Bush’s Baked Beans secret family recipe!)<\/p>\n

Kathleen Chavez, a lawyer involved with a class action suit against the company, hit the nail on the head by stating, \u201cWhen you\u2019re making eight bucks an hour, going in and hiring an attorney and paying filing fees to find out whether you can work at Subway is just not practical.\u201d Many politicians agree.<\/p>\n

According to Eater.com, Senators Chris Murphy (CT) and Al Franken (MN) \u201cplan to introduce a bill that would ban businesses from including non-compete clauses in contracts with low-wage employees.\u201d The article continues to state, \u201cThose who earn less than $15 an hour, $31,200 annually, or must work a minimum wage job do not have to agree to contracts that prevent them from working at a similar business.\u201d Letters have been written to the Federal Trade Commission, by 35 House Democrats, asking for the FTC to \u201clook into the issue of non-competes for low wage workers.\u201d<\/p>\n

In due time, we will see whether or not non-compete agreements are here to stay for minimum wage employees in the service industry. So far, Jimmy John\u2019s franchisees have been able to keep delivering those non-compete agreements by surviving recent court appearances. There\u2019s a clear sentiment that hopefully one day Jimmy John\u2019s will head freakishly fast away from non-compete agreements and embrace their employees with open arms and an open job market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To this day, I can remember the excitement I felt while filling out paperwork for my first job during my senior year of high school. Even though I was only going to be a minimum wage employee, who worked a meager twenty hours a week seating guests at the local seafood restaurant, I finally had… Continue reading Not So Fast Jimmy John's!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"post-template-no-sidebar.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-5040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-restaurant-foodservice","tag-insight","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5040\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}