This goes for most people not just low wage workers. Even people that have good retirement funds don't want to break into them and so it's not necessarily easy to turn down jobs.
For high demand positions it's not necessarily a matter of turning down the job.
As a tech worker, I've had success in negotiating contract amendments to limit the scope of non-competes or overly broad IP assignment clauses. Hiring takes a lot of time, and many employers are willing to budge on contract terms to save the expense/hassle of starting the recruiting process from scratch.
Obviously this is only possible if you work in an industry where you're sufficiently in-demand and thus have some negotiating power.
Well its true that you have some negotiating power and much more than low wage workers usually however there is still a power imbalance.
For my contract work I have on multiple occasions pushed back on non-competes and overly broad IP. My success has been mixed. On one occasion there was a non-compete and it was a high profile contract that I didn't want to lose so I felt like I had to go along with it.
The last time a non-compete came up I tried hard to argue against it but the guy wouldn't budge. He seemed to think he needed it to keep me working for him. I guess part of the problem there is that I just don't want to drop this startup that I have put so much time into.
On multiple occasions I have found that I had to insist on overly broad IP assignment clauses being removed from contracts. I have been successful in those cases. Basically what they try to say, depending on how you interpret it, is that all work you do even in your spare time, is owned by them. I have been able to change that to clarify that they own only work that is directly related to the project and non-core stuff can be open source and unrelated projects are my own.
I've been a low wage employee, and an employer of low wage employees. The deals are always negotiable. Clauses like non-compete for low skill workers are a throwaway item anyway, it's not like they're going to sue you over it. Only rich people are worth suing.
