Recently, I have been seeing some contracts of employment (offer letters) laced with some obnoxious clauses; one of which caught my attention is the clause that you are not allowed to leave the job for a so-so number of years and if you do you will have to pay the company a so so amount. This is to say that as a part of the employment requirement, you are not allowed to quit or resign from the job for whatever reason for a period of years and if you do or if you intend to do that you will refund the company 80% of the salary they have paid you and if you decide to play smart and relocate out of the country or elope, the guarantor whom you provided and have signed off on your behalf before you got the employment will be closed on by the company.
A friend who got a job with an investment bank drew my attention to this because his offer letter also contained this clause and
an internet user recently posted something similar to this; he was offered a job as a medical laboratory scientist, with a pay of N270k per month but with a non-negotiable clause in the offer letter that he must not leave or resign from the job for the next 2 years and if he does or intends to resign before the expiration of two or more years he must refund 80% of every monthly salary ever collected.
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This type of contract of employment clause as I have got to know is quite familiar in the banking and medical industry.
Now the big question is; what is the legality and enforceability of clauses like this in the contract of employment; are they legal and are they enforceable in court?
The simple answer is that conditions or clauses like this embedded in a contract of employment are not legal and enforceable. You can leave or resign a job whenever you want despite whatever clause or time bond you signed, as long as you have given the organization a reasonable notice of your intention to resign or quit. Even if you leave without notice, the employer cannot enforce that clause of you staying for stipulated years in court because such clauses are illegal and the court can not be used to enforce an illegality.
Loosely speaking, parties are at liberty to contract however they wish and add covenants and clauses they deem fit into the contract and the parties are to be bound by those clauses in the contract but such contractual clauses must always conform with legality for it to be valid, legal and enforceable in court. This is to say that the liberty or freedom of contracting parties to make their contract has its limitations.
Why such a clause in a contract of employment of working for a stipulated number of years before you could leave is illegal and enforceable is that such clause subjects an employee to servitude and both the constitution and other labour laws prohibit contract of servitude.
Lawyer’s closing note; if you get a good job with good pay but the job comes with a time-bound clause, go ahead and take the job and you can leave whenever you like because such clauses are not legal and can never be enforced against you, just ensure to give the organisation a reasonable notice of your intention to resign before you leave so as to satisfy the provisions of the labour law.
