Change Buildings, Lose Your Job: The No-Hire Clause Buried in Building-Service Contracts

Building services contractor Adamas Amenity Services LLC and its affiliated businesses have agreed to cease enforcing no-hire agreements that restricted building owners and management companies across New Jersey and New York City from directly hiring workers employed by Adamas without paying a significant penalty.DOCUMENTED

The agreement, reached jointly with the New Jersey Attorney General's office, requires Adamas to immediately stop enforcing all existing no-hire agreements and bars the company from including similar restrictions in future contracts.DOCUMENTED

What the agreements restricted

According to the complaint, Adamas's no-hire agreements restricted building owners and management companies from directly hiring workers employed by Adamas without paying a substantial fee, and also prevented those owners from indirectly hiring Adamas employees by switching to a competing building service contractor.DOCUMENTED As a result, employees suffer hardship if the building they work at changes management companies, since the no-hire agreement could force them to leave their jobs even though the new management company might otherwise want to keep them on.DOCUMENTED

For Adamas employees — mainly low-wage workers performing amenity, janitorial, front desk, security, and other services — the agreements limited their ability to negotiate for higher wages, better benefits, and improved working conditions, since a competing employer that wanted to hire them away had to either pay a penalty to Adamas or avoid hiring the worker altogether.DOCUMENTED

A restriction on building owners too

The no-hire agreements didn't just limit workers directly — they also restricted the ability of building owners to seek or accept bids from any of Adamas's competitors, since switching contractors could mean losing long-serving employees the owner had come to rely on and value.DOCUMENTED That dynamic restricted the ability and incentive of Adamas's competitors to make investments and compete for customer demand, according to the complaint — meaning the no-hire agreements suppressed competition on two fronts simultaneously: among workers seeking better jobs, and among contractors seeking new clients.DOCUMENTED

Officials' statements

"Anticompetitive no-hire agreements, just like the ones Adamas uses, prevent workers from realizing their full earning potential," said Daniel Guarnera, director of the Bureau of Competition, announcing the settlement.DOCUMENTED "American workers have a right to pursue job opportunities that offer them higher pay and better benefits," Guarnera added.DOCUMENTED

If the building where an Adamas employee worked changed management companies, the no-hire agreement could force that worker to leave their job — not because the new company didn't want them, but because of a clause the worker likely never saw.

What the final order requires

Following a public comment period, the Commission voted 2-0 to approve the final order, which requires Adamas to immediately cease enforcing all existing no-hire agreements and provide written notice to any customer subject to a no-hire agreement within the last three years that the restriction is now null and void.DOCUMENTED Adamas must also post clear notice in new hire documentation and shared employee spaces informing workers they are not subject to any no-hire agreement and may seek or accept a job with the building owner directly, or with any competing company.DOCUMENTED The order includes robust compliance and monitoring obligations, including verified written compliance reports, over a 10-year term.DOCUMENTED

The third case in a recognizable pattern

The Adamas settlement follows two earlier enforcement actions against similar building services contractors: Planned Building Services and Guardian Service Industries, both resolved in the final weeks of the prior administration.REVIEWED That the current administration pursued a third, materially similar case against Adamas suggests no-hire agreements in the low-wage building services industry have drawn sustained bipartisan attention, even as commissioners have sometimes split along partisan lines over the underlying evidentiary standard needed to bring such cases in the first place.REVIEWED Together, the three cases cover thousands of building-service workers across the New York City metropolitan area, suggesting the practice of restricting worker mobility through customer-facing contracts, rather than direct employment agreements, had become widespread across the industry before regulators intervened.REVIEWED

Why the contracts were hard for workers to discover

Because no-hire agreements like the ones Adamas used are embedded in business-to-business service contracts between the contractor and the building owner, rather than in any document an individual worker signs, affected employees typically have no direct way of knowing such a restriction exists until they try to change jobs and encounter it as an obstacle.REVIEWED That structural invisibility is part of why the settlement specifically requires Adamas to post notices directly in shared employee spaces and new-hire paperwork — a remedy aimed not just at stopping enforcement of the clauses but at ensuring workers actually learn the restriction no longer applies to them, since many may never have known the restriction existed to begin with.REVIEWED

For workers in low-wage service industries more broadly, the Adamas case adds to a growing body of enforcement precedent establishing that a contract clause a worker never signs and may never see can still be found to unlawfully limit their job options — meaning the responsibility for identifying and challenging such restrictions falls more heavily on regulators and worker advocacy groups than on any individual employee navigating the terms of a business relationship they were never a party to.REVIEWED The Adamas order's 10-year compliance term ensures regulators retain visibility into the company's contracting practices well beyond the immediate settlement, requiring periodic verified reports rather than a one-time certification of compliance.REVIEWED

Building owners and management companies that currently work with Adamas or have done so in the past three years should expect to receive formal notice that any no-hire terms in their existing agreements no longer apply, and can independently confirm that status by contacting Adamas directly if no such notice has yet arrived.REVIEWED

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