By Shane Wright

Copyright brisbanetimes

Imagine, for a moment, you’re a first year apprentice hairdresser. You’re 16 years old, still living at home with your parents, and getting by on an annual trainee wage of less than $40,000. It’s highly unlikely that you have a deep understanding of Australia’s industrial relations system because the only contract you’ve come across to date is for your smartphone.

Despite the modest wage and entry-level position, a business in the nation’s capital employing this teenager required her to sign a non-compete clause when joining the salon.

That non-compete clause meant if she left the salon (or was sacked), she would be barred from working at another hairdresser within a 30-kilometre radius, cutting the hair of any of her previous clients or even talking to salon suppliers for 12 months.

Businesses talk a big game about enjoying the cut-and-thrust of competition, how it brings out the best of them. But when a 16-year-old on $39,559 is considered such a threat to a business’s survival that they’re barred from colouring the hair of anyone in suburban Canberra, I call bullshit.