I work for a CPA firm and was sent to a client to fill in while they look for a new bookkeeper. Well, they love me and offered me the job. I just told my boss and direct supervisor and they are pissed.
My direct supervisor said she has to talk to the managing partner and HR because there may be a liability issue. Is that true or is she just in a panic?
I’m really freaking out now. This job will pay almost $10,000 more per year and I need to do this for my family. I have a 5 month old and we’re broke.
This is not necessarily correct. An employee may work under a contract or a known office policy that prohibits him or her from going directly to a competitor or a client, precisely to prevent this kind of poaching. BUNNY, if you didn’t sign that kind of contract or work with that kind of policy, they probably will not be able to prevent you from taking another job that is more financially advantageous to you. You’re an employee, not an indentured servant. I agree with FEAR ITSELF: If they want to keep you, they can match the offer you’ve received.
IANAL, but PROVIDED neither you nor the client signed anything to say that you couldn’t be poached, you should be in the clear. However, if the contract that the client signed with your firm said that they couldn’t hire a person that they were provided under the contract for x amount of time after the contract was over, then there is a problem.
In most states, these kinds of employment policies or contracts are held to unenforceable in a court of law. I know; I signed one in California, then had an attorney look at it when I was offered another position. Unenforceable, even if you signed a contract.
In most states, the liability of the client to your employer will depend on what it says in the contract between your employer and the client. Similarly, you’d have to review your employment contract to see if it prohibits jumping ship. If either contract prohibits this kind of thing, then you have to review the cases and see whether, and to what extent, your jurisdiction enforces them.
I am not your lawyer, you are not my client, this is not legal advice.
From CA to most of the fifty states, huh? I’d say that’s an overgeneralization. State law varies on this sort of thing a lot. And most of it gets pretty specific about the terms of such an agreement.
If they threaten to sue you or try to interfere with your new job, then it’s time to talk to a real lawyer. Spend a bit of that extra 10K getting competent legal advice from a licensed attorney in your state.
I was presuming she worked in the US, perhaps that was unwarranted. But the fact remains that most US states, enforcing a non-compete is a crap-shoot. This article describes the problem well:
Forgive my impatience, but you are still qualifyiing your statement with “in most states” and you still don’t know where she lives. You also have now revised your position to “most non-compete agreements are difficult to enforce,” which is not the same as what you originally said, which was “you have the right to accept any job, anywhere, anytime.”
This was and is an indefensibly broad statement. There’s no penalty to you in conceding that. I’m not trying to bust your chops, but I would hate for BUN to rely on your off-the-cuff legal advice when there is a fair-to-middlin’ chance it may be wrong.
Well, I’m in New York and I don’t recall signing a non-compete agreement.
So if the client signed a contract stating they couldn’t poach me, they can still be sued and I wouldn’t be worth the hassle.
I guess I’ll have to wait and see what HR and the managing partner say. I will definitely keep you posted. I won’t have internet access this afternoon after 1 pm EST, so I’ll update this thread until then and then after 6 tonight.
It is a broad statement, but the chances of it being wrong, in my opinion, less than fair to middlin’. You obviously disagree. BUN should always consider the source when asking for advice on the internet. But, based on experience here on the SDMB, there will always debate over these kinds of issues; no one is goning to get 100% concurrence on what is right or legal. That is for the courts. But I stand by my original staement; you have the right to accept any job, anywhere, anytime. You may need to defend that right in court, but would not hesitate to do so.
You are certainly correct that she should consider the source of any advice she receives. Considering that you personally would apparently rather be wrong than admit you were wrong, you are yourself a shining example of the value of that advice.
Just a quick anecdote… at a job I worked in 10 yrs ago we had exactly this issue.
We hired a temp to help out during year-end accounts, and our finance director (who wasn’t too competent, to be honest) decided that he’d offer the temp a full-time job.
However, the standard contract he’d signed with the temp agency made it clear that he was not allowed to offer the job for at least 3 months after the placement ended.
The temp agency got v. shirty and threatened all kinds of legal stuff… our MD agreed a settlement, and the FD was given a bollocking.
This was in the UK, and I’ve no idea whether the case could have gone all the way to court etc. But it’s certainly common practice in the UK for such agreements to be signed (unenforceable though they may be).
I believe the liablity lay with the poaching firm, rather than the individual employee.
If the OP is in the United States, chances are that he or she is not a member of a union. Relatively few of us are so fortunate. Also, I have a notion that accountants/bookkeepers might not be eligible to join unions anyway under U.S. law, although I’m not sure about that.
