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To be fair, I didn't click that link, but I might have a story that's of interest:
My one sister's SO works at a wheel manufacturing factory in some kind of fairly-technical-but-fairly-important-but-not-really-management position. Great guy, he is, and an even better handyman. Fixed my parents' central heating after three different contractors had failed at the task.
Anyway, his company once tried expanding to the US by building a new factory there. Of course they had to buy some parts locally (which weren't cutting edge in any sort of way, and neither were the American contractors, but that's another story and it might be a regional thing), but more importantly, they had to hire local workers.
And that was a problem.
A fucking huge problem, actually. In Europe, you have a kind of loyalty to your company: When they hire you (at least if you're a somewhat skilled worker), you expect to work there for a couple of years and not be fired for some bullshit reason, and on the other hand the company expects you to not run off for $.10 an hour more at some other company.
Accordding to him, though, that's exactly what happened there: They couldn't find experienced workers for their plant, so they started training the guys they hired. And as soon as they'd gotten a little bit of training, as soon as the company had made an investment in them, they ran off to other companies. The plant got into all sorts of troubles, and it took them more than half a decade to adopt to the very, very different employment culture oín the US.
So I wouldn't really blame those guys if they required a signature on a non-compete agreement (I don't know if they did). These things have their place, at least in some niches.