Here is the quick and simple story. Wife and I get orders to move to El Paso (I am active duty military she is my spouse). She takes $17k paycut to move out here and work for a company as an intelligence analyst for a sub-contractor for DHS. We get out here and only after we get out here and on her first day of the job do we find out:
- The 'recruiter' or whatever you want to call the person without question lied about her location of employment. We were told the employment was located in El Paso. The job listing was for El Paso. When she got here she found out on her first day the actual job was 31 miles further away in New Mexico. She was told it was temporary and then it suddenly became permanent. No reimbursement for the extra distance and my understanding is you cannot claim mileage TO work and from on your taxes, only if you need to use your vehicle in the course of your day for work (such as driving back and forth between ICE prisons and DHS offices)
- Also on the first day she was made to sign a non-compete clause saying she couldn't work similar work or competing work (very ambiguous as to what that means specifically and HR couldn't really answer the question) for 6 months from her last date of employment with the current contractor. We took this to mean that she couldn't go work the same exact job for another contractor in the same office (many of these gov't offices have a bunch of people doing the same job working different companies and contracts and want to prevent you from moving to a different company if you find out that they make more money doing the same work ).
Right now she is doing illegal immigration analysis for ICE but is thinking of applying for a job doing drug smuggling related intel work for a different contracting company that falls under the DEA (so she would technically fall under the Justice Department instead of the Department of Homeland Security).
Can they come after her for the non-compete? How does that work exactly when they do pursue you for it? Would you be able to plead your case to a court or something and show undue stress/expenses (or whatever you want to call it) due to the company lying about the location of employment?
Obviously the best case would have been to simply not take the job but she was already moved out here and we were sort of hung out on a limb after she quit her old job when we found out.
- The 'recruiter' or whatever you want to call the person without question lied about her location of employment. We were told the employment was located in El Paso. The job listing was for El Paso. When she got here she found out on her first day the actual job was 31 miles further away in New Mexico. She was told it was temporary and then it suddenly became permanent. No reimbursement for the extra distance and my understanding is you cannot claim mileage TO work and from on your taxes, only if you need to use your vehicle in the course of your day for work (such as driving back and forth between ICE prisons and DHS offices)
- Also on the first day she was made to sign a non-compete clause saying she couldn't work similar work or competing work (very ambiguous as to what that means specifically and HR couldn't really answer the question) for 6 months from her last date of employment with the current contractor. We took this to mean that she couldn't go work the same exact job for another contractor in the same office (many of these gov't offices have a bunch of people doing the same job working different companies and contracts and want to prevent you from moving to a different company if you find out that they make more money doing the same work ).
Right now she is doing illegal immigration analysis for ICE but is thinking of applying for a job doing drug smuggling related intel work for a different contracting company that falls under the DEA (so she would technically fall under the Justice Department instead of the Department of Homeland Security).
Can they come after her for the non-compete? How does that work exactly when they do pursue you for it? Would you be able to plead your case to a court or something and show undue stress/expenses (or whatever you want to call it) due to the company lying about the location of employment?
Obviously the best case would have been to simply not take the job but she was already moved out here and we were sort of hung out on a limb after she quit her old job when we found out.