Tradesmen International LLC, which ranks as the 12^th-largest industrial staffing firm in the US, agreed to end its existing noncompete agreements and pay $287,100 in restitution to affected employees, the Washington state attorney general’s office announced Thursday.

Tradesmen’s agreements with its host employers included noncompetition provisions that restrict the hiring of Tradesmen workers by Tradesmen host employers, according to Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s office, and Tradesmen signed the consent decree to avoid a lawsuit.

A Tacoma, Washington-based employer filed a complaint with the attorney general’s office about Tradesmen International’s noncompete agreements in July 2021. The complainant wanted to hire a worker placed with the company by Tradesmen, but Tradesmen threatened legal action to enforce its noncompete agreement with the employer, according to the attorney general’s office. A state law that went into effect Jan. 1, 2020, allows employers to negotiate noncompete agreements only when the prospective employee would be paid more than $107,301.04 per year.

An investigator from the attorney general’s office applied online for a job with Tradesmen International to test out its hiring process, and at no point during the investigation was the tester told about the noncompete agreements Tradesmen has with host employers, the attorney general’s office reported. The company did not provide any information during the initial application process about job mobility restrictions. During a first interview, the investigator specifically asked whether there were restrictions on taking a job with a host employer and the Tradesmen employee responded that there were no such restrictions; during a second interview, a different interviewer would not answer specific questions about restrictions on taking future jobs with host employers.

Ohio-based Tradesmen operates nationwide and has seven offices in Washington state: Bremerton, Burlington, Fife, Kennewick, Lynnwood, Spokane and Vancouver. Since 2020, it has placed approximately 1,200 workers with more than 300 businesses in the state, mostly for construction-related work.

SIA contacted Tradesmen International for a comment but has not yet received a response.