Free Plumbing Employment Contract Template

No, and this is the most common defect in a downloaded employment contract. At-will means either party may end the relationship at any time, with or without cause. A definite term is a promise of employment for that period. A clause permitting termination only for cause is, by definition, not termination "with or without cause". Print two of those in one document and you have created an ambiguity that gets resolved against whoever drafted it — usually the employer, who thought they had an at-will relationship and did not. This builder makes you pick a basis and then tells you when the clauses you entered fight it. If you want a term, keep it and delete the at-will language; if you want at-will, drop the term and the for-cause standard.

Every state presumes at-will employment except Montana, which has a statute on the point. Montana's Wrongful Discharge From Employment Act (Mont. Code Ann. §§ 39-2-901 to 39-2-915) makes a discharge wrongful if it was not for good cause AND the employee had completed the employer's probationary period — employment is at will only during probation. If the employer does not establish a probationary period, or state that there is none, before or when the employee begins work, a 12-month period applies automatically from the first day, and the original period plus any extension may not exceed 18 months. So a flat "at-will" statement on a Montana employment agreement overstates the employer's position the moment probation ends. This builder surfaces that whenever Montana is the governing state. Note also that the at-will presumption elsewhere can still be displaced by the employer's own documents — a handbook, an offer letter, or a verbal assurance of continued employment.

$684 per week — $35,568 a year for a full-year worker — effective January 1, 2020. That is the trap, because a great many templates and articles still quote the 2024 figures. The Department of Labor's 2024 rule would have raised the level to $844 a week and then to $1,128 a week, but it was vacated nationwide by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on 15 November 2024, and the Department applies the 2019 rule's level for enforcement. The highly-compensated-employee total annual compensation level is $107,432. This builder prints the level with its effective date and a note on the vacatur, so anyone reading the contract can see which number it used and why.

No. A salary is necessary for most exemptions and sufficient for none of them. Every exemption in 29 CFR Part 541 has a duties test, and in trade shops the duties test is what fails: a lead install tech or a field supervisor who spends the week doing the same work as the crew is not performing exempt executive or administrative duties, whatever the salary or the title says. This builder therefore asks two questions — does the pay clear $684 a week on a salary basis, and which duties test are you claiming — and flags "exempt with no duties test identified" as a contradiction. Two more traps worth knowing: the executive, administrative and professional exemptions require a true salary basis, so an hourly rate cannot support them at all, and the outside sales exemption has no salary requirement whatsoever, so the pay figure tells you nothing about it either way.

There is no federal ban. The FTC's 2024 Non-Compete Clause Rule was set aside nationwide by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas on 20 August 2024 in Ryan, LLC v. FTC, before its effective date, and on 5 September 2025 the FTC voted to dismiss its appeal and accede to that vacatur. So enforceability is a question of state law, and the states genuinely conflict. California voids employee non-competes by statute however narrowly drafted, and since 2024 it is unlawful even to include one. North Dakota and Minnesota void them too. Oklahoma voids the non-compete but allows a bar on directly soliciting established customers. Illinois and Washington permit them only where the employee's annualized earnings exceed a statutory floor. This builder grades your clause against 6 verified states — CA, ND, OK, MN, IL, WA — and prints "not evaluated — check your state" for anywhere else, because a stale fifty-state table is more dangerous than no table at all.

Because a confidentiality or non-disparagement clause that sweeps in wages and working conditions is routinely found unlawful for non-supervisory employees. In McLaren Macomb, 372 NLRB No. 58 (2023), the National Labor Relations Board held that merely offering an agreement that requires an employee to broadly give up Section 7 rights violates Section 8(a)(1) — the provisions at issue were a non-disparagement clause covering statements that could harm the employer's image and a clause barring disclosure of the agreement's terms. Section 7 protects discussing pay, hours and working conditions with coworkers, a union or a government agency, and it does not depend on the workplace being unionised. It does not reach supervisors as NLRA § 2(11) defines them, which is why this builder asks whether the role is supervisory before raising the point — but the test is the actual authority to hire, discipline or effectively recommend it, not the job title, and "lead technician" often fails it. The safe version narrows confidentiality to genuine business information and keeps an explicit Section 7 carve-out in the text, which this template does by default.

Not sexual assault or sexual harassment claims. The Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-90, enacted 3 March 2022, codified at 9 U.S.C. §§ 401-402) provides that at the election of the person alleging the conduct, no predispute arbitration agreement and no predispute joint-action waiver is valid or enforceable with respect to a case relating to a sexual assault or sexual harassment dispute. Two details matter. The election belongs to the employee, not the employer — so the clause is unenforceable as to those claims whether or not it says so. And the statute reaches class and collective action waivers too, not just the arbitration promise. This builder ships the carve-out on by default and flags an arbitration clause that has it switched off.

That depends on your state, and this template will not print a number. The Department of Labor states that federal law does not require an employer to give a former employee their final paycheck immediately. State law does set deadlines, and they range from due immediately on the day of discharge to the next regular payday, sometimes with a different rule for an employee who quits than for one who is fired, and often with penalties for paying late. Pay frequency works the same way: some states mandate at least semi-monthly, some require weekly for particular occupations, and several distinguish manual workers from salaried staff. Both are fields you fill in here, not defaults we invented — an invented default on someone's real employment agreement is worse than a blank.

No. It is a well-organised starting point that resolves the contradictions free templates ship with, uses the salary level that is genuinely in force rather than the one that was vacated, and tells you honestly where state law takes over and where it has not been checked. Employment law is the area where a single overbroad clause can convert a routine separation into a wage claim or an unfair labour practice charge, and the exposure runs backwards for years. Have an attorney licensed in the governing state review and adapt this before you put it in front of a hire. That disclaimer ships as visible text inside every PDF, Excel and Word file this builder produces.