Recently after four years of employment in the sales industry the owner of our company made us fill out a waiver form stating, " If I ever terminated my employment or was fired" we could not work in the same industry for six months. Is this legal?

There are actually two separate issues in your question (and a few more raised by other answers). I will address each issue separately. 1) Is a contract signed after the employment began binding? The answer to this question is YES, if there was consideration for the new promise. Every contract has three parts: 1) an offer, 2) acceptance of that offer, and 3) consideration. Consideration essentially means that each party must confer a benefit or suffer a legal detriment. When consideration is lacking, this is call a gift promise, and is not enforceable. For example, most contracts are simple sales transactions. Thus, one party agrees to give up money in exchange for a product or service, and the other party agrees to give up a product (or perform a service) in order to gain money. Both sides have given something up, and therefore, there is consideration. On the other hand, suppose that I promise to give you a car (and we sign a promissory note to that effect), but you do not agree to give up anything in return. This is an unenforceable promise to give a gift. Applying this to your question, we must identify whether each party conferred a benefit or suffered a legal detriment. You (the employee) conferred a benefit by promising not to compete, which is consideration. So the question remains did the employer confer a benefit to you? One answer said that an employer cannot condition you keeping your job on whether or not you agree to an additional term. This, however, is not necessarily true. The only time an employer can NOT condition you keeping your job on a new term is when he already has a preexisting duty to NOT fire you. For example, if you have a 5 year employment contract and your employer says “sign this or you are fired,” you can sign it and not be bound by it because the employer had a duty to not fire you for another year. This is true because there was no consideration for the new terms. (Note: this assumes you live in an at-will employment state, which 43 states are.) If you DO NOT have an employment contract, then your employer is free to fire you at any time, for any reason (except for a legally discriminatory reason). Thus, your employers promise to not fire you is consideration because he has every right to fire you. 2) Is making you agree to a non-compete agreement or else be fired unenforceable as a contract made under duress? One answer said that the contract is not enforceable because signing it under threat of being fired is duress? This could not be further from the truth. In fact, if this is duress, then ALL contracts are signed under duress. For example, a bank says they will not give you a loan unless you give them a lien on your property. Can you get out of the lien on a duress theory because “you only agreed to the lien under threat of not getting the loan?” Of course not. Similarly, if a car dealership only agrees to give you a car if you agree to pay for it, can you get out of paying for it because “the only reason you agreed to pay was because otherwise they would not give you the car?” Again, of course not. Duress requires an outside influencing factor. If I put a gun to your head and say “sign this deed for your home in exchange for $50,” this would be duress. We often make agreements that are extremely one sided out of desperation or need, but that desperation does not equal duress. 3) Is an agreement not to compete in the same industry for six months after termination a valid contract provision? The answer to this is an unequivocal MAYBE. Some states completely ban such a provision on public policy grounds, with one exception: if the provision is in connection with the sale of a business, and the time limit and geographic limit is reasonable, it will be a permissible provision. Most states are less strict, and simply say that it is permissible if only for a reasonable time and location. The policy behind this rule is simply that we do not want to prevent people from making a living. For example, if you are a computer sales person, a provision stating that you cannot sell computers for the next 6 months would mean that you are basically unemployable in your field for 6 months after termination. This would usually not be permitted. However, if the agreement said you cannot work in the same field within 50 miles of your current employer for 6 months, this would usually be upheld because you can still practice your profession by going more than 50 miles away, and in either event, the restriction is limited to 6 months.

I have seen cases where this was enforceable due to the employer paying the costs for training. The non compete clause basically doesn't allow you to be trained at your employers expense then go work for someone else for a set reasonable amount of time. It would be like a microsoft employee recieving the latest training at Microsofts expense then that employee leaving to work for google in the same field microsoft just paid for you to be trained in.

Generally if you have to sign something as a condition of keeping your job, that would be considered signing under duress and would not be enforceable.

I could understand signing this paper for new employees as a "condition of employment". I do not believe it would hold in court. Most incidents like this, fall into a grandfather clause for those employees already working and should not apply to them. There have been test cases to prove this. I do not know the website.

It is certainly legal. However, I think what you are asking is whether or not it is enforceable. The answer to that is it depends. First, in order for a contract to exist (i.e. be valid), it must have consideration. Consideration is the trading of something for value for something of value. Thus, the agreement is only valid if you got something of value in exchange for signing the agreement. Did you get something of value? Well, in some states, not getting fired is adequate. So if your boss said sign this document or be fired, then you got something of value (i.e. you got to keep your job). Second, even if you have a valid contract, you now have to establish whether a non-compete clause is enforceable. This varies by state, but the general rule is that they are enforceable so long as they are reasonable. A six month limitation that is limited to a specific geographic area is most likely reasonable. The same without the geographic limitation could go either way. Note: In some states (e.g. California), non-compete clauses are never reasonable unless entered into as part of an agreement to sell a business. And even then, it must be reasonable.

1) Not a contract, no legal consideration, done under duress 2) Even if it was done before employment, it would be seen as an unfair restriction in trade which is illegal.

I do not think so. They cannot force you to sign on threat of loss of your job.