Non-Compete Agreements: Enforceable in Oregon?
Posted on Jun 18, 2010
As an Oregon employee, if you have a non-compete agreement that predates 1/1/08 you can probably recycle the paper. Any Oregon employer still using non-competes drafted prior to 1/1/08 needs to update its agreements. Oregon has drastically limited the enforceability of non-competes. The subject employee must be engaged in administrative, executive, or professional work and paid on a salary basis. In addition, the employee's total, annual, gross salary and commissions must exceed the median family income for a 4 person family, as determined by the U.S. Census Bureau. Oregon allows an employer to side-step some of these limitations by continuing to pay the employee half of the employee's salary during the period that the employee is restricted from working. Even without making such payments, a ball and chain (although not as long or as heavy) is still available to the Oregon employer. The restrictions do not apply to "non-solicitation agreements" -- restrictions from soliciting other employees or soliciting or transacting business with customers of the employer. (We have assisted many employers in converting their non-competes into non-solicitation agreements.) Also, employers are not restricted from pursuing other claims for ex-employees that pilfer trade secrets and proprietary information.
