Non-Compete Bill Found Itself Anchored Down

ESPN would have preferred to stay about as far from the issue as Barry Bonds has from baseball’s steroids investigation.

But it didn’t get its wish.

As Bonds has for months, ESPN made unsavory local headlines through the winter and into the spring. This despite the fact that it was clear — in the company’s case — that by all accounts it had done nothing wrong.

The Bristol-based sports megalith’s contract with New York City-based Guardsmark security company ran out in December and, after putting the contract up for bid, ESPN signed a new deal with Securitas Security Services, of New Jersey.

When Guardsmark laid off about 40 security personnel but did not permit them to be hired by Securitas — citing a contract clause forbidding workers to go to a local competitor — suddenly Richard Blumenthal’s sirens were blaring.

As the Attorney General made trips to the state Capitol to testify, the bad-looking publicity kept coming. Headlines like “ESPN Guards Can’t Stay” and “Guards Let Down” made it seem like ESPN was in some sort of labor tug-of-war.

The adage about any publicity being good publicity was not holding true. As spokesman Michael Soltys explained, the company was a victim of happenstance.

“It was an issue between Guardsmark and Securitas, that happened to be at ESPN. It could have been anywhere,” he said.

As legislation barring non-compete clauses for security guards began to move, the best thing, it seemed, was not to take a position.

Bill Changes Face
Then happenstance struck again. Channel 3 anchor Al Terzi heard about the legislation and, having been barred from changing television jobs in 1994, jumped in to have broadcasters exempted in the bill as well. Legislators happily tacked them on.

Though they are common practice in many industries, non-compete clauses (usually lasting six months or a year) are more being more frequently viewed as unenforceable in various states.

Still, they are increasingly being used by software companies and others to prevent secrets from being given to competitors when programmers switch jobs. This has some programmers as angry as Terzi, as evidenced by cases like when Montreal’s Ubisoft Entertainment sued Electronic Arts Inc., of Redwood, Calif., for hiring away their video game techies.

But besides the non-compete clauses, the two industries included in the Connecticut bill, having come from two completely unrelated sources, had no relation to one another — except a connection to ESPN.

Suddenly ESPN, which employs over 200 broadcasters, was roped back into the mess.

It is the company’s standard procedure, according to Soltys, to include first negotiation/first refusal clauses in broadcasters’ contracts. When looking for his next deal, for instance, anchor Dan Patrick would need to consider ESPN first and even if he then decided to sign with, say, Fox Sports, ESPN would be given the chance to match the offer and thereby retain him.

The resulting bill, after Terzi had his say, would have made those clauses illegal in the broadcasting world.

So Levin, Powers, Brennan & Shea, ESPN’s lobbying firm jumped onto the playing field, eventually getting the state House to add an amendment specifically excluding cable broadcast employees. It was aided by the Connecticut Business & Industry Association which, at the behest of business owners in many other industries, wanted to limit restrictions on non-compete clauses as much as possible.

Soltys said that when the bill (with which it previously wanted nothing to do) began reflecting Terzi’s wishes, the company wanted to make sure it had a chance to weigh in on “the broadcasters’ part of it,” though in reality the broadcasters part was nearly identical to the security guards part.

Thus, beginning in October, the Securitas guards manning parking lots and vestibules in Bristol for hourly wages will have employment rights that the multi-million dollar broadcasting crew it protects does not.

Jonathan O’Connell is a Hartford Business Journal Staff Writer.