Bizarre Employment contract? (NOT signed yet!!)?

1. I am a Health care provider (Not a Dr.) in a high demand field. My job requires for me to travel to a few hospitals in NY, PA, NJ, MD, and VA. There are only 1-2 hospitals in each state & there is a restrictive covenant for the whole state should I choose leave the company! (Sounds too broad and trade restrictive to be valid)

2. There is a requirement to provide 16 (SIXTEEN) weeks termination notice. Again sounds too restrictive. Who is going to wait for me to start working for them 4 MONTHS after they hire me. (IF I decide to leave).

Looking for Legal Precedent on the 16 Weeks being too restrictive. Surely, there is a legal test like the restrictive covenant issue.

The 16 weeks has got to be just a suggested termination notice... when you wanna quit, you let them know with as much notice as you can, but when you have to leave, you leave.... they just have to deal with it... and you can hope they still give you a good reference.

Have a lawyer look at it.

NOPE! No way would I sign that!!!!

I work in the mortgage industry, and here is something nutty that Homebanc (now out of business) used to do:

When they hired loan officers, no matter how much experience you had before coming to them, if you quit or you got fired, they made you sign a document that you owed them $60,000 in training expenses and had a non-compete clause for 5 YEARS!!!! working for ANY mortgage company.

I had friends that they used to call and try to recruit for jobs...they just laughed at them.

Essentially? It barred you from the industry.

Trust your gut! It's as crazy as it sounds.

Restrictive covenants/non-compete clauses like the one you describe are unenforceable in most states.

In terms of the 16-week notice period, the employer has effectively nullified their at-will status by implementing that provision. Therefore, whether you leave them or they leave you, there would be a 16-week notice period - for example, if you were terminated for cause , you would have a case that they owed you the 16 weeks because the at-will expectation is voided by this contract.

These contracts are negotiable - go back to them and tell them you want an 8-week notice period, for example, or that you want to strike that clause altogether. If you are in a high-demand field, you are in a strong negotiating position.

Good luck.

Is there an end date on the contract? If so, then 16 weeks seems more then reasonable - they are not obligated to let you out of the contract at all just because you don't want to live up to the date you committed to at the beginning. Software engineering contracts are written that way.

If your field is really so hard to recruit for, then 16 weeks may be a reasonable amount of time for them to initiate, execute and conclude a search. It doesn't sound like hiring a new clerk at the local 7-111 based on your description.

Sorry, presumably the pay due to supply and demand makes the restrictions also due to supply and demand worth it.

Still, if you are in such high demand, why go through a contractor at all - contact the hospitals direct and cut out the middle men.