Ensuring Compliance with Digital Signature Lawfulness for Alternative Work Offer Letter in United States

How to eSign a document: digital signature lawfulness for Alternative Work Offer Letter in United States

I am an employment lawyer in Seattle Washington and in this video I'm going to break down my top four red flags to watch out for in your next offer letter and why each one is so important and stick around for my number one red flag at the end of this video because you are not going to want to miss this one so let's get [Music] started number four on my list of red flags and offer letters is vague job descriptions and vague job descriptions might seem innocuous at first but having a vague job description is actually a gigantic problem for a few reasons first and foremost a vague job description can negatively impact your quality of life it's hard to know what you're supposed to be doing if you do not have clearly defined responsibilities and furthermore if you don't know what you're supposed to be doing you won't know if you're doing it well and trying to do your job every day when you don't know what you're supposed to be doing or whether or not you're doing it well can be an incredibly frustrating experience and importantly for this video there are legal implications too a vague job description makes it much easier for your employer to misclassify you and misclassification is a topic that comes up in wage claims to learn more about misclassification watch my video on overtime I'll link to it in the description but basically certain workers are exempt from overtime requirements meaning that they don't get paid overtime or breaks and whether a worker is exempt from overtime is determined by that worker's job duties so if your job description is vague it makes it much easier for your employer to claim that your job duties are exempt from overtime because your actual job duties aren't written down anywhere so it will be your word against theirs the next issue with vague job descriptions is that they make it much more difficult to win cases involving illegal terminations illegal terminations can fall into several categories including discrimination retaliation and wrongful termination but in each case once you make your claim that you were fired for an illegal reason the employer then gets the opportunity to argue that it fired you for a legitimate reason and the legitimate reason that employers rely on most commonly is poor performance and when an employer argues that it fired a worker for poor performance the worker can overcome that argument by showing that they perform their job well so having a vague job description makes that process much more difficult for the worker because how are you going to prove that you were performing your job well if there are no clearly defined job responsibilities let me give you an example say Jane Doe was fired from for speaking up against sexual harassment well Jane has a case of retaliation because she engaged in protected activity when she spoke up about sexual harassment and her employer terminated her in retaliation for speaking up however once Jane brings her legal claim the company argues that it fired Jane for poor performance not in retaliation for speaking up against sexual harassment well if Jane's job description is super vague she will have an incredibly challenging time proving that the company is lying because how can she prove that she performed her job well if if her role is not clearly defined now there are of course other ways to prove this claim for more information on that watch my video on how to prove retaliation I'll link to that video in the description but let me just say that the vague job description makes things more difficult okay let's move on to the next one my next red flag is actually a bunch of different things that all fall under this umbrella called restrictive covenants and restrictive covenant is a legal term that you might not be familiar with so I'm going to explain what that is restrictive covenant in the employment context are contract Clauses that prohibit you from doing something after you leave the company here are the most common but there are others too first non-compete agreements second non-solicitation agreements and third non-disclosure agreements let's start with non-compete agreements these are the most common restrictive covenants in employment contracts non-compete Agreements are exactly what they sound like they are agreements not to compete with the company if you ever leave so you can't go work for a competitor or start your own company that would compete with this employer and non-compete Agreements are a huge red flag because they severely limit what you can do if you leave your company now the good news is that policy makers generally disfavor non-compete agreements because they stifle competition so some states have laws that prohibit non-compete agreements altogether and other states like Washington state where I am licensed to practice have laws that severely limit their enforceability in Washington state non-compete Agreements are only enforcable if the worker is making over $100,000 per year the employer properly notified the worker about the non-compete agreement before the worker accepted the job offer and the non-compete agreement is for a duration of less than 18 months after the employment has ended and furthermore as of recording this video in 2024 the Federal Trade Commission is proposing a new rule that would completely Outlaw non-compete agreements so if you watching this in the future non-compete agreements might be a thing of the past next is non-solicitation agreements and these agreements are very similar to non-competes a non-solicitation agreement is an agreement not to solicit the employer's customers or clients and while it can seem reasonable for your employer to ask you not to steal their clients if you leave it can severely restrict your employment opportunities especially if your employer has a substantial presence in a particular Market because imagine if your employer has such a large presence in a certain Market that essentially everyone is their client now all of a sudden you are blocked from engaging in that market altogether in those situations non-solicitation agreements can have the same effect as non-competes which substantially limit the workers mobility and job prospects finally are non-disclosure agreements or ndas for short and ndas are simply agreements not to disclose certain information and in principle an agreement not to disclose certain information seems like a reasonable ask of course an employer doesn't want you to disclose its trade secrets to its competitors and if that's all the NDA covers then it's totally fine however the problem is that most ndas are far more broad than just covering the employer's Trade Secrets and when an NDA is over Brad it can have the same stifling effect as non-competes and non-solicitation agreements because it can overly restrict your ability to talk about certain things and even worse some overb ndas can restrict your ability to talk about the employer's misconduct thankfully in many states we have laws that prohibit these over Brad ndas in Washington state we have a law called The Silence no more act that actually makes it illegal for an employer to give worker and NDA that would restrict that worker's ability to talk about illegal Employment Practices and if an employer in Washington state attempts to give one of its workers one of these unenforceable ndas the worker can actually bring a claim against the employer for violating the ACT okay let's move on to the next one the next red flag to look out for is a repayment provision and repayment Provisions are agreements to repay the employer for certain expenses if you leave the company within a specified period of time and again there are a number of different ways that repayment Provisions might pop up on an offer letter or employment contract but I will be talking about the most common two repayment Provisions first our moving expense repayment provisions and second our training expense repayment Provisions moving expense repayment Provisions Ares when an out-of-state employer offers you a job that will require you to move as part of the offer the employer will give you a bonus to cover your moving expenses but the Shady part is that if you decide to leave the company for whatever reason within a certain period of time you will have to pay back the company those moving expenses which usually amounts to thousands of dollars and training repayment Provisions operate the same way for training by accepting the employer's job offer the employer agrees to enroll you in costly training or certification programs and while it can seem like a great deal at the time if the job doesn't work out for whatever reason and you need to leave the employer will require you to pay back the cost of training or certification which again will amount to thousands of dollars and these Provisions are so unjust because most workers I've talked to about signing them are not even aware that they have to pay back the company until the company tells them and then the worker is basically stuck in a job that they don't want to be in because they can't afford to leave and repay the company thousands of dollars so with these repayment Provisions employers are essentially locking you into your position and not letting you leave okay so my number one red flag and the one I caution you the most from signing is the arbitration agreement and technically ARB Agreements are restrictive covenants too but I decided to give them their own section of this video because they are the worst agreement you can enter into as a worker arbitration Agreements are completely unjust but to understand why an arbitration agreement is so unjust we need to understand what arbitration even is in the first place so first what is arbitration arbitration is an alternative to the traditional legal system normally if you have an employment claim like wrongful termination retaliation harassment or claims of unpaid wages you would take your case to court where a judge and jury would decide what a just outcome should be but with arbitration instead of going to court you file your claim with an arbitrator this arbitrator takes on the role of both the judge and the jury making decisions about your case and what the outcome should be and this arbitration process has several inherent flaws first conflicts of interest unlike judges arbitrators are not elected by the public or appointed by the government they are hired by private arbitration companies and the defendant employers select the arbitration company so these arbitration companies depend on defendant employers for their business which creates an inherent conflict of interest because the arbitrators know that ruling in favor of the employer will lead to more business for them in the future furthermore the decisions made in arbitration are generally confidential and final they cannot be appealed like Court decisions can you see in court you can appeal a judge's bad decision in arbitration you cannot so arbitrators have no accountability and finally arbitration agreements usually prohibit class claims that means that if your employer is involved in widespread illegal practices against a large number of their workers those workers cannot band together instead each of them has to file separately which can be prohibitively expensive and complicated for most individuals who opt instead just to drop their claims because of these factors the statistics show that workers rarely succeed in arbitration arbitration is heavily skewed in favor of employers with no jury to hear the case and no public accountability for the arbitrators this setup makes it incredibly difficult for workers to get a fair shake so what can you do about these red flags if you spot one in your offer letter well you can always try to negotiate with the employer and if the employer really wants you they will negotiate with you unfortunately most workers do not have this kind of Leverage at this stage of the hiring process and employers will hold these Provisions out as conditions of employment so the workers faced with either signing the agreement or finding another job and if that is the position you are in and you have other job prospects I would encourage you to consider your other options most offer letters do not have these kinds of Provisions okay so now you know my top four red flags to look out for in your next offer letter if you see any of these red flags think carefully about your options and what other job opportunities are out there and if you want to know more about other nasty tricks employers play on workers watch my video about the four signs that you were about to be fired I will link to that video up here somewhere and if you like this video give it a thumbs up and share it with other workers I make videos about the laws that protect workers the more we hold employers accountable for the wrongdoing the more we protect other workers that's all for me this week see you next time