More US Employers Are Trapping Workers in a New Form of Indentured Servitude

https://truthout.org/articles/more-us-employers-are-trapping-workers-in-a-new-form-of-indentured-servitude/

by metadat • 4 years ago

341 293 4 years ago

Group_B• 4 years ago

Of course the acronym is TRAP. Can't make this stuff up.

Well, actually they did - the commonly used name does not include the P, I’ve never seen it that way elsewhere. The author appears to have added that solely to make for a catchy acronym.

KennyBlanken2• 4 years ago

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Training+Repayment+Agreem...

nine_zeros• 4 years ago

All businesses in America ultimately end up with rent-seeking and bondage.

metadat4• 4 years ago

I think it reflects more the high degree of desperation employers are feeling with staffing -- especially in cases where they can't (or won't) raise wages.

All those boomers abruptly quitting en mass during the pandemic really screwed things up for "the plan". It's time to rethink things, and this TRAP approach is rubbish.

tdeck• 4 years ago

Yep, that's where our sympathy should lie here. With the employers /s

ARandomerDude• 4 years ago

Hard to see how that's the case with most of the business owners I know. They are small companies with < 10 employees making a living.

When you're talking about Fortune companies with 10s of thousands of employees, maybe you're right. But "all businesses in America" is painting with a massive roller instead of a brush.

pessimizer2• 4 years ago

I've had worse experiences at small businesses than at medium-sized or large ones. Larger businesses get scrutinized. At small businesses, the owner looks you in the eye every day and thinks of your salary as coming directly out of his pocket.

WalterBright11• 4 years ago

Long ago, I remember a fellow engineer who bitterly complained his employer had placed him in bondage. I asked him, why don't you quit and get a better job? He replied, you don't understand. I have bills to pay. I have no savings. My finances would collapse if I missed even one paycheck.

I pointed out that he was wearing expensive clothes, he and his wife drove new cars, they owned a McMansion with expensive furniture in it. I tactlessly concluded he had placed himself in bondage, the company had nothing to do with it, and was likely completely unaware of his debt situation.

He became very angry with me. Oh well, tactless Walter strikes again.

chubs• 4 years ago

That old 'victim mentality' traps people into not realising they have agency and power to improve their lives. Thanks for the comment :)

prottog• 4 years ago

The absurdity of the name aside, this is unconscionable on the part of the employers, and it's likely that most employees in this kind of circumstance can tell their employers to stuff it without any adverse consequence.

One thing worth keeping in mind for prospective entrants to the workplace: if any employer says you owe them money (for acts other than intentional or gross negligence, which for the most part employees are nevertheless legally not liable, but may feel ethically responsible), then it is no longer an employee-employer relationship. Put another way: if you're not an equity partner in a business or a strictly independent contractor who signed an agreement saying otherwise, you should never have to pay an employer for anything.

ianai3• 4 years ago

How hard would it be for a random person to fight back successfully though? If it requires hiring a lawyer that might be enough barrier itself. All they have to do is ensure they don’t pay the worker enough to hire a lawyer.

metadat4• 4 years ago

The companies might find it difficult to actually get legal enforcement against poorly compensated employees. It seems like more of a scare tactic.

tehwebguy• 4 years ago

Courts will enforce contracts for all kinds of things many would consider unconscionable, I wouldn’t want that to be my backup plan.

refurb3• 4 years ago

It's not hard, you just ignore it.

If some scumbag company is trying to squeeze employees for training costs, you really think they'll pay tens of thousands for a lawyer to sue over this?

It's empty threats.

WalterBright11• 4 years ago

Workers successfully sue their employers all the time.

fatneckbeardz• 4 years ago

"it's likely that most employees in this kind of circumstance can tell their employers to stuff it without any adverse consequence."

wrong.

you can be fired for no reason

you can be put on a blacklist and become unhirable

you can have your unemployment denied

you can lose your healthcare

if you have some kind of court situation where you have to have a job to stay out of prison, you can lose your freedom

now put that up against being homeless , being sick, being in prison, then you do whatever the man says.

this is how bad things are, and how completely irrelevant the legal system is to the working class

rendall• 4 years ago

you can be put on a blacklist and become unhirable

Are these legal?

Does anyone have experiences with blacklists from the hiring side? I have never seen such a thing. How are they shared? How does one know if someone is on the list for a good reason? How does it scale?

thayne3• 4 years ago

Also if you aren't a citizen and your immigration status is dependent on your employment (or you are an illegal immigrant), you can be deported.

But also, given the rest of the post I suspect it was a typo and prottog meant to say "it's likely that most employees in this kind of circumstance can't tell their employers to stuff it without any adverse consequence"

makeitdouble• 4 years ago

Although critics question the legality of TRAPs, a legal analysis published last year found that courts generally uphold the agreements in challenges brought under anti-kickback provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the law establishing a federal minimum wage.
In 2000, the study noted, a federal judge in Manhattan nullified one employment agreement in the financial services industry, ruling that the language of the contract “approaches indentured servitude.”

The general picture seems to be: this situation is mostly compatible with how the rule makers want it to be, is in no way accidental, and will be upheld upon challenge in most cases.

Some people will have the decency to not go with the grain, but they are few, and represent the exception more than the rule.

Spooky23• 4 years ago

I think these things make sense where intended. My last employer will pay for a graduate education - you’d get a decent MBA or other degree and pay nothing. They’d even give you time off for certain things.

In exchange, they wanted a 30 month commitment post graduation. I think that’s fair and very much employee driven.

The problem is when you apply this to unskilled labor. “Training” someone at Petsmart in how to wash and trim a Labrador retriever is a basic task and nobody should be on the hook for that.

alistairSH5• 4 years ago

Exactly.

Pursuing a graduate degree is optional (outside of select professionals - lawyers, doctors, prof engineers). You can attend graduate school outside the scope of employment (on your own dime). The market for graduate programs is competitive. And the degree retains its value beyond the immediate job placement.

PetSmart should be required to prove that its training program provides actual, long-term value to the employee if they want to claw back the money spent on training. In my mind, the program would need to result in a legitimate industry certification for that to be true...

As is the case for some skilled trades, where you complete an apprenticeship or other training and earn membership in the trade union. Or trucking, railway engineering, or commercial pilots.

11thEarlOfMar• 4 years ago

First, they are called Training Repayment Agreements. Not sure where 'Provision' was added.

Then, there are certain attributes that need to be adhered to before these agreements will hold up.

1. Must be Voluntary. Typically, the training is within the context of a job the employee already has. They are are undergoing training to expand their skills and thereby earn more.

2. Must be portable. Means that once the training is completed, the employee could take the skill and go work somewhere else.

3. The details must be clearly spelled out.

4. Must be legal in the jurisdiction the employee will be working. Training Repayment Agreements are not legal in all locales. [0]

[0] https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/spring2022/pa...

encryptluks22• 4 years ago

Must be portable. Means that once the training is completed, the employee could take the skill and go work somewhere else.

Gets trained in AWS-specific cloud services. Sure, I can port my knowledge to another company as long as they rely on one service provider.

happyopossum2• 4 years ago

That’s a really bad example if you’re trying to show one that’s not portable - there are literally thousands of jobs at hundreds of companies for people trained in AWS.

cratermoon• 4 years ago

"voluntary" doesn't mean much when the employer to worker power differential is so heavily weighted towards the employer. This is or was a thing with H1B visa holders.

DangitBobby• 4 years ago

They added "Provision" to make the acronym TRAP, obviously. It was a good decision.

rdtwo• 4 years ago

Nobody who benefits from the abuse will be punished - that is the way.

ecshafer• 4 years ago

I saw one of these at a job when I graduated undergrad. I had an over the phone interview with a consulting company, Revature specifically. I can't even remember if I applied to them or not (since I applied to so many). After what was a 10 trivia question type interview they decided to "give me an offer!". It was a contract $50k a year, for two years with a $20k "training fee" that was fully repayable if you leave before 2 years. I obviously declined it because that is a ludicrously low salary for a software developer in the US, and also it was an insane "training fee". So I presume, their business model is desperate people for jobs, "train" them, then keep them in indentured servitude. They also tried to hard sell a job which is obviously gross.

SamoyedFurFluff2• 4 years ago

This happened to me, too. I could imagine someone without connections, who is desperate, who simply doesn’t know how much software devs could make, who comes from poverty, etc. would be vulnerable.

giraffe_lady• 4 years ago

That was mostly me at a certain point in my career except I did know how much devs could make. That doesn't make them actually offer you a job at that salary though. I didn't get into anything like this but I took an offer far far below market rate.

When you have no connections, no resources, no work history in the field, dependents to support.... Shit $42k was still more than I was making in the career I came from. I took it then and people are still taking that stuff now. They aren't wrong to do so either, but the ones exploiting them in this way are wrong to do it.

petesergeant• 4 years ago

Alternative hot-take: those first two years of experience are often the hardest to get, and junior devs are simply not that productive. 3x minimum wage for some work experience that is going to allow you to be charging 6 figures in short order is probably ... not that bad? Hard to make exact comparisons because of inflation + country differences but my first programming job paid $30k and I didn't feel exploited

treis• 4 years ago

I didn't go through Revature but I did go through something similar. They hired me after an extended period of travel with no programming experience to speak of after no one else would. 8 years later I'm a "senior" dev making 200k.

Can you argue that I was vulnerable and my original company took advantage of the situation? Perhaps. But nobody else was hiring me so in my eyes they were the company that treated me the best at the time.

7speter3• 4 years ago

Just leave it at someone who doesn’t have connections who is desperate, really.

62951413• 4 years ago

This is similar to what bodyshops used to do 15+ years ago to the developers they brought in on H1Bs. To prevent them from jumping ship once they are in the country. Curiously, the penalty was also about $15K and typical compensation about $65K. Is it happening to the citizens now too?

Swizec• 4 years ago

Oh you don’t even need to charge anything for H1Bs to work as indentured servitude.

The visa says who you’re allowed to work for. Leave the company (or get fired or laid off) and you have 10 days to leave the country or find another job that will sponsor your visa. As you can imagine few people choose to leave the company under these conditions.

Best part is that companies can also appeal to the employee’s sense of fairness: “We paid $10,000 for your visa. You value that favor from us don’t you? Imagine if you had to pay that yourself”

kevin_thibedeau• 4 years ago

It also helps inflate the lie that they're paid a "prevailing wage".

benj1114• 4 years ago

Body shops?

I guess you don't mean www.thebodyshop.com ???

Frost1x• 4 years ago

Healthcare providers through rural areas (much of the US) do this often. They contract out specialized health professionals because the local economies and regions struggle to attract and retain healthcare professionals and cant produce enough locally either. As a result, many regional healthcare salaries balloon when you normalize cost of living. Healthcare professionals start getting a bigger cut of federal subsidies (Medicare, Medicaid) and risk pools (insurance).

Several bodyshops popped up that specialize in international recruitment, sponsor healthcare workers internationally who expect significantly lower comp, and work out the logistics of getting them licensed, sponsored, and moved where demand exists (note that I say logistics, the person often pays some or all of these fees). They offer a low rate to these international workers (which is high to them) by your typical position advertising gymnastics then rent them out to healthcare providers in set contracts. The worker signs a contract that typically includes a fee for breach of contract. For nurses and physical therapists, I've seen it at $20-$40k which doesn't seem significant until you consider the person likely has nothing of that magnitude in savings because they came from a poorer area.

You then may think, well healthcare workers can make $100+k so with strict savings one could limit their indentured servitude and breach before, then realize they're actually paying closer to $40-60k to their workers, benefiting of economies of scale to manage the logistics (like managing visas) and pocketing the rest of the margins. The workers are often locked into these areas for several years before they're financially stable enough to leave while bodyshops dangle greencard sponsorship over their heads which is a long process in and of itself but is even longer when it's a carrot held for 3-5 years of servitude first.

Once your workers have their greencards they have more leverage in negotiation and typically move on to make truly competitive salaries. Meanwhile, the bodyshops basically pocket high margins, manage a little bit of risk, and just leech off those in desperate situations (hospitals, their patients, and international workers looking to better themselves).

Some may say this is just the cost of admission to immigrate to the US. I think it's more a failure of neoliberal principles. I imagine IT isn't much different. The work visa program is largely used as just a leveraged global labor recruitment position for businesses to exploit. It wasn't designed this way and isn't always used this way, but it is done far far too often.

thayne3• 4 years ago

I know someone who got several offers like this. And often, it sounded like you had to pay them back even if they are unsatisfied with your work and fire you. There were also a couple offers where they wouldn't pay him for the first few months as they "trained" him, and if they liked him, they would keep him on for a low salary "with lots of opportunities to move up".

giantg2• 4 years ago

'they would keep him on for a low salary "with lots of opportunities to move up".'

Isn't this the scheme at most places?

rtev• 4 years ago

They’re currently doing this in infosec to all the new people wanting to break into the field.

cat_plus_plus5• 4 years ago

So did your college give you a better deal or did they just charge you for training and pay you nothing? What of people who went to a college less useful than yours, if any, and couldn't get any other job? After two years, maybe they can step up based on having a resume.

Broken_Hippo5• 4 years ago

The college didn't try to trick them into a job that they'd have to stay in for 2 years to avoid a fee. The person knew - upfront - that it wasn't a job. They knew upfront that they'd need to pay the college for training. They were free to take employment for income while doing schooling.

Seriously, there is a difference between a college and upfront knowledge about fees and someone trying to trick you into an indentured servant "job".

Spoom• 4 years ago

Revature is well known and generally advised against in r/cscareerquestions as they come up regularly. There are unfortunately a few companies with this model now.

danjoredd2• 4 years ago

Revature is the worst. The only people that sign up for them either don't know any better, lack motivation, or are truly desperate. Its one of the most gross companies I have ever come across.

Another similar company reached out to me last year. I can't remember their name, but it was the exact same business model. They wanted to move me to the other side of the country and train me in a language that I already used all the time.

kelseyfrog4• 4 years ago

I dont get it. If it's a voluntary exchange then it's definitionally non-exploitative.

duxup4• 4 years ago

Based on the article the amounts owed appear to be at times arbitrary and don’t seem to reflect the cost to the employer/ what work the employee did.

I don’t think you can voluntarily / knowledgeably agree to a completely unknown sum.

kelseyfrog4• 4 years ago

Wages already dont reflect the value of the work done. Thats how profit is made. So, I'm not seeing much of a difference.

marak830• 4 years ago

If enough employers insist on this, then the standard of employment goes down.

Workers rights must be immutable to stop that happening.

Dylan16807• 4 years ago

If it's real employers with a reasonable duration, then would it have a significant impact even if it's very widespread?

andrekandre• 4 years ago

  > I dont get it. If it's a voluntary exchange then it's definitionally non-exploitative.

"voluntary" is such a tricky word isn't it... used to paper over exploitative arrangements since basically forever.

ckw5• 4 years ago

Sell yourself into slavery— it’s definitionally non-exploitative.

rsynnott4• 4 years ago

I have seem people, on this very website, unironically claim that Roman slavery was non-exploitative for that reason (this was a major source of slaves at certain points in Rome's history).

darkarmani4• 4 years ago

What did the employee get in exchange? Bait and switch training?

duxup4• 4 years ago

They didn’t mention state laws. I find employment laws vary a lot state to state.

Are there places this might be prohibited by state law?

I ask because I once took a job that involved 6 months of paid, benefits and all, training before you even started work.

One guy did up and quit after 6 months, but generally this is how this company did business. It worked… I always wondered why they didn’t have some sort of restriction or rules or something to avoid being taken advantage of. I assumed they didn’t because of some state law.

bombcar• 4 years ago

Zappos does that and pays you to quit iirc.

The main idea is that after investing six months you’re not likely to quit, and if you are the type to quit the company would rather learn that than have you tough it out.

ilaksh• 4 years ago

Should be prison time for business owners who do this.

Of course there won't be, because our society is controlled by self-serving, ignorant Malthusians, but in my mind it's very similar to slavery, and there are few crimes that are worse.

teeray• 4 years ago

You load sixteen training videos, what do you get,

Another day older and deeper in debt…

mLuby• 4 years ago

  I was coding remotely where the sun always shines
  rebased my co'mmits and I pushed to CI
  I closed 16 bugs in the comp'ny repo
  And the scrum master said, "Well, bless my soul"

WorkerBee28474• 4 years ago

I worked for a company that did this in a white collar capacity - FDM. I basically regard them as the scum of the Earth.

However, unlike the article, they usually rent out their trainees as consultants to big companies with broken hiring practices. Myself and a lot of other people I know got an impressive name to put on our resumes and spun that into decent careers. So maybe I shouldn't be so harsh.

Mc91• 4 years ago

I work for a Fortune 50 company, more than one software programmer consultant who worked for us had one of these agreements. Of course, they never got any real training. All the ones I knew didn't have their contracts with us re-upped as they were eager but didn't know anything and had been presented as senior programmers when they weren't even associate/junior level programmers.

c3534l2• 4 years ago

I don't think it should be legal to charge employees for training in any form. Either provide it for free, or don't provide it at all. What possible purpose does putting yourself in the middle as both the lender and beneficiary have other than to fascilitate abuse?

bushbaba• 4 years ago

So you don't feel that doctors should pay for their education? What about jobs which require paid certifications? But in general I agree. Keep paid education separate from employment. No good can come from conflating the two.

c3534l2• 4 years ago

That is such a misrepresentation of what I said I think you might have just misread it or something. They should pay for their education with money. If they can't afford medical school, they can take out a loan. That loan shouldn't be a condition of employment payable to your employer. Like I said, either you should get the training yourself or the employer should provide it.

molotovh• 4 years ago

Education and job training are not the same thing. Education in a field is general knowledge needed to perform in the field regardless of employer. Job training is learning the specific knowledge needed to perform a specific position for a specific employer, including their SOPs, policies, etc.

throwaway7432• 4 years ago

No, they shouldn't. Higher education should be accessible to all.

If the "higher taxes" argument is what's implied, the return on an educated populace would show in GDP, likely reflect in lower crime rates, improvements in quality of life, among other things.

nottorp• 4 years ago

So you don't feel that doctors should pay for their education?

Some HN readers do live in countries where higher education is free ish.

kube-system• 4 years ago

I think it could make sense to lower barriers to entry for some highly specialized vocations, like ones that require third party certifications. Especially in times when the job market is not as hot as it is now. In this market, the only explanation for TRAPs seems to be exploitation.

tbrownaw• 4 years ago

My employer has a tuition reimbursement program. IIRC it has clawback if you leave within like 6 months.

This is obviously different in that it's entirely optional, and relatively sane rates (whatever the real university decides). But because of that clawback I could maybe see it getting caught up in a carelessly written ban.

wombatpm2• 4 years ago

I was at a fortune 300 company that had that. They would routinely WFR the recent MBA grads who were then free and clear of any obligations. Surprise surprise they are no longer a Fortune 500 company

thr0wawayf002• 4 years ago

It would be one thing if the clawback is at least fairly itemized and clearly stated up front. What's appalling about these stories is that the dollar amount is completely arbitrary and determined after the employee signs on.

I passed on a job opportunity early on in my career because there was a clawback provision in my employment agreement that was very transparent and yet very brutal. I couldn't imagine taking that job and being entrapped by that clawback provision after I'd started.

jameshart• 4 years ago

And you get an actual certificate or qualification from the institution, which adheres to you personally and has value beyond your current employment. The PetSmart dog grooming academy appears to have been the required training to do a job at PetSmart but have no value whatsoever outside the context of that job.

UncleEntity3• 4 years ago

Stuff like truck driving school is expensive. If only people who could pay up front could get a license to drive a truck there would be a lot less truck drivers and stuff wouldn’t get moved around so you can have next day delivery on non-essential goods.

Sure, they could change the requirements to make it easier for someone to drive around in a 80,000lbs death machine but is that in anyone’s best interest?

What the companies do is put you through enough training to get your license, more training on top of that and stay with them for a year or you have to pay whatever they say it costs[0] for the training. All in all it’s a working system.

[0] as spelled out in a contract but really has nothing to do with what it costs to train a person. The company I currently work for has this racket where owner/operators pay the trainees’ wages (along with every other expense to operate the truck) during on the job training for the most part and are pretty aggressive trying to get people to train the new drivers. Annoyingly aggressive.

Broken_Hippo5• 4 years ago

The system would work if we simply provided low-cost schooling (taxpayer funded). It would keep folks from winding up with a predatory company who may or may not train you well, merely enough. You don't need to make the requirements easier - just lower the barrier to entry in a different way.

Not to mention that having enough well-rested folks with a CDL means that everyone is a little more secure, and we are more likely to have enough people to drive busses and transport goods in emergencies. (Yes, I know it'll take more than lowering the schooling costs to fix all this, but it is a start)

cycomanic2• 4 years ago

How about the company provides a good enough working environment so people want to stay working for them? I mean they want truck drivers if they can't get enough qualified drivers they either have to pay higher salaries or pay for the training. If the employee leaves, tough luck.

impossiblefork• 4 years ago

Yes, but you can still loan people money to train to become truck drivers.

You can even enter into agreements with them, that if they pass you must employ them.

There's no need for an agreement tying someone to an employer. Such things are very dangerous, since it has the potential to give the employer very great power.

sokoloff2• 4 years ago

Pilot training is quite expensive. Getting the 1500 hours of flight experience required to hold an Airline Transport Pilot certificate is even more expensive.

It seems like situations like this are ones where "we'll agree to pay $25K for your training and you agree to work for us for two years" is reasonable, particularly since the training costs are generally deductible for the employer, but are often not for the employee.

alistairSH5• 4 years ago

There are a few differences...

- Pilot training comes with a certification for the person that applies to any pilot job.

- Pilot training is usually provided by a certified training organization and follows an industry-established curriculum.

- The price of the training is discoverable in advance and there is a competitive market for providing the training.

Whereas the PetSmart program comes with no certification, doesn't follow a published industry curriculum, and the price is fixed directly by PetSmart with no ability to obtain the training elsewhere.

The pilot training situation may not be ideal, but it's clear to me the PetSmart program exists primarily to lock employees into jobs at PetSmart.

Animats• 4 years ago

This is debt peonage. The trouble is, the US law against peonage was not drafted tightly enough.

"The holding of any person to service or labor under the system known as peonage is abolished and forever prohibited in any Territory or State of the United States; and all acts, laws, resolutions, orders, regulations, or usages of any Territory or State, which have heretofore established, maintained, or enforced, or by virtue of which any attempt shall hereafter be made to establish, maintain, or enforce, directly or indirectly, the voluntary or involuntary service or labor of any persons as peons, in liquidation of any debt or obligation, or otherwise, are declared null and void."[1]

As you can see, the reference is to "the system known as peonage". So, new, innovative means of accomplishing the same result may or may not be covered. So far, cases involving training repayment agreements do not seem to have taken the peonage route.[2]

The PetSmart case in California makes several arguments. One is that PetSmart is illegally operating an unlicensed educational institution. The "California Education Code provides that “a note, instrument, or other evidence of indebtedness relating to payment for an educational program is not enforceable by an institution unless, at the time of execution . . . the institution held an approval to operate.” (Cal. Educ. Code § 94917") There are other specific California labor laws probably being violated here. This case is just starting in San Mateo County Superior Court. Scheduling hearing in November.

But that won't help in other states with weaker labor laws.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1994

[2] https://towardsjustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/PetSma...

bagels• 4 years ago

It also doesn't help people who can't afford lawyers, or made one of these agreements still not knowing that they are illegal.

daniel-cussen4• 4 years ago

It's no easy feat actually getting on the phone with a lawyer, like making their phone screen, both messages the call would be recorded, the redirect, not easy.

quickthrower2• 4 years ago

They should totally allow this. But... Since this debt is a form of specialized investment, turning the relationship into a business deal, it should be available only to employees that are accredited investors. Gotcha!

ETH_start4• 4 years ago

I see this as a way to give companies an incentive to train workers. Without these kind of provisions, the risk that the employee would leave would eliminate much of the incentive to invest in training.

As for the criticisms of indentured servitude - which if we're going to call this that, is a very watered down version - I think they're reflexive and not thoughtful.

Today we have something much more coercive than indentured servitude and that's involuntary servitude in the form of income tax law. At least with indentured servitude you choose the servitude and it expires after the ordained time.

The danger of indentured servitude is that it is offered by private companies with a profit motive who would be more likely to seek to abuse the very dangerous relationship they enter into with the the counter party, to exploit that party. A government imposing an income tax has no such perverse incentives. So the rejection of indentured servitude in favor of government imposed taxes has some reasonableness behind it, but I think it's ultimately a crude and hasty substitution.

hnbad3• 4 years ago

Funny, you'd think a low supply of qualified workers would be sufficient motivation for big companies to train workers or fund external training programs (giving them ample opportunities to advertise themselves as the obvious choice as a future employer in that career). This is how most civilised countries handle it.

fzeroracer2• 4 years ago

Typically speaking if you're worried about employees leaving the way it's 'supposed' to work in a capitalist society is that said employer pays more, offers more benefits, or improves the work culture.

The fact that you pivot immediately into an irrelevant argument against income tax has no bearing on the companies using debt as a way to force employee retention.

ETH_start4• 4 years ago

Yes, but competing employers can do exactly what you do, and offer applicants more pay. By foregoing on training, they can free ride off of the training the subject employer paid for.

>The fact that you pivot immediately into an irrelevant argument against income tax has no bearing on the companies using debt as a way to force employee retention.

Taxation is in fact how we solve the problem of trading liberty for security in the absence of indentured servitude. To elaborate: people need economic security, and many are willing to submit to tax obligations, or in the past, to indentured servitude, to get it.

So it's entirely relevant to the question of whether this kind of training for debt arrangement is consistent with accepted social mores, no matter how much you may want to over-simplify and wrap up the discussion.

darkarmani4• 4 years ago

I see this as a way to give companies an incentive to train workers.

They don't need this abusive system to do that. They can reimburse college credits and require a certain amount of time. The difference is that they aren't charging $20k for training that is worth $500.

Today we have something much more coercive than indentured servitude and that's involuntary servitude in the form of income tax law. At least with indentured servitude you choose the servitude and it expires after the ordained time.

That's not indentured servitude. As soon as you quit making money, you owe no tax. How are you handcuffed into servitude when income is taxed and not wealth?

ETH_start4• 4 years ago

That's not indentured servitude. As soon as you quit making money, you owe no tax.

In practice, the vast majority of people need to work. Whatever the income tax rate is, is the proportion of the labor that is being involuntarily done for the government.

jongjong• 4 years ago

When the government hinders competition through unjust regulations and by controlling the money supply to benefit incumbents, what we get is indentured servitude and slavery. The key elements of slavery are poor working conditions, a lack of opportunities and a government which treats one class of people favorably other another class of people (in the modern case, those people who are closely connected to the government receive better treatment over those who are not connected to government due to access to lucrative contracts and favorable regulations).

jessaustin• 4 years ago

This is also one of the things driving inflation right now. Since there is so little competition in so many industries, firms can set their prices (and on the other side, set their wages) to whatever they want and consumers have little choice on the matter. We're already past Gilded Age levels of inequality, and the assholes don't see any reason to stop turning the screws. They actually still claim that they're going to control inflation by raising interest rates!

cat_plus_plus5• 4 years ago

Your college didn't do that, saddle you with a mountain of debt and demand repayment even if their education turned out worthless?

thr0wawayf002• 4 years ago

That's a pretty weak comparison. From the article:

BreAnn Scally, the lead plaintiff in the class action against PetSmart, told lawmakers about how she was left owing $5,500 to the company for a dog “Grooming Academy” that was initially advertised as free. Registered nurse Cassie Pennings testified about being stuck with $7,500, “more than six months’ rent,” after leaving one hospital job because she was appalled by staffing ratios during the COVID-19 pandemic and didn’t want to be complicit in neglecting patients.

College doesn't initially advertise itself to be free and then tack on thousands in fees when you try to leave. Is it overpriced and antiquated in the modern workforce? Sure. Do they create arbitrary fees out of thin air to scare you into continuing to work in an unhealthy environment? Not that I know of.

cat_plus_plus5• 4 years ago

Ok, so is the issue is false advertisement rather than paid training per se? Sure, let the courts sort that out! But all things being equal, I would rather get paid while being trained and have an option to have its cost waived if I stay on for some time. Of course if training is a scam, again false advertisement. Sadly, plenty of college degrees are also a scam.

EasyTiger_• 4 years ago

Two popups about donating to a website I’ve never heard of, instant close

travoltaj• 4 years ago

This thing is pretty common in India for fresh graduates joining big MNCs.

They usually have to stay at the company for 1-3 years, and pay a "training amount" if they leave before that.

taurath• 4 years ago

Companies will do /anything/ nowadays to keep people from being an employee. Can we please simply take the whole idea of benefits away from employers? The life and health of people shouldn’t be in the hands of some capitalists trying to squeeze every last legal drop of blood from workers while hiding behind the protection of an inaccessible legal system.

I have many many friends who are trapped in a cycle of needing to take on contract work for want of a full time position, and they have to juggle their health insurance every time their contract ends. This make seeing day the same doctor or same therapist for even 3 months nearly impossible. Wonder how many people die yearly due to lack of ability to access healthcare while on a legally “not an employee” position - it’s gotta be in the thousands. The worst part is society says this is acceptable loss. It’s ludicrous.

badrabbit11• 4 years ago

You know, I am pretty vocal about worker rights and I have been saddled with debt of over 7K$ for in the job training but I see absolutley no problem with this. Unless there are debtors prisons it just means your credit score is messed for like 7 years (I can function just fine without using credit at all), which means you can't buy a house or a new car when it comes to the essentials but you can live in an apartment and get a used car.

I mean, I was told the training cost and that I will have to pay for that cost either by working for them a certain amount of time or if I fail to do that, out of pocket. I knew what I was getting into, as an adult I am responsible for my actions so as much as I want that debt gone and improvey credit score in case I ever need it, it is all my fault, I signed on the dotted line and I was clearly made aware of the consequences.

What am I missing here? Honestly asking. I don't care how profitable a company is or if they invented a random number out of thin air, everything costs what people are willing to pay for it. I don't care what people's situation is, adults get treated like one. If that same person was let's say a genral contractor remodelling your bathroom for $5k and abandoned it mid way, he pays for the cost to complete or restor it right? Why would that be different if instead he was employed by the house owner?

I just can't reason around this. At the end of the day, there was an agreement and I gave my word on something. I can and probably will avoid the consequences of my going back on my word but isn't it plain dishonesty to claim the deal was unfair?

It is even harder to reason around this if I can pay my basic expenses and on top of that earn the equivalent of the training cost (if I bailed out) and if the pay back period has a reasonable (less than two years) limit.

Thorrez• 4 years ago

It seems similar to me to non-compete agreements, which are unenforceable in California, but enforceable in many other states.

At the end of the day, there was an agreement and I gave my word on something.

Sure, but the anti-TRAPers would say the ideal situation isn't that you can break the agreement, the ideal situation is that the company doesn't require the agreement in the first place.

badrabbit11• 4 years ago

I agree with them in principle but unless that is law it is a meaningless sentiment.

Ferret7446• 4 years ago

There's an easy solution for that, don't sign contracts that have a TRAP clause.

somesortofthing• 4 years ago

The issue with debt for training is the same issue as the one with all exploitative working conditions: The choice of whether or not to work somewhere is often illusory. Real people inhabit a specific area with a specific set of employers. If the only job openings that:

1. You're qualified for

2. Will hire you specifically

3. Will pay you enough to survive

4. Are within a reasonable distance from you

5. Don't have some other, even worse catch than training debt

are ones that saddle you with a life-changing amount of debt if you quit before x years, people are coerced by the fact that they need money for basic to enter this kind of working arrangement, even if they technically had a choice.

badrabbit11• 4 years ago

Then the people in that area can pass laws to regulate this I guess? That's the government's duty after all. But short of violating an explicit law, why are employers obligated to care about how many good jobs are in an area? It is also an economic function, if it is for high demand jobs with low supply of employees you won't see this.

ckw5• 4 years ago

People who accept gross exploitation harm everyone who works.

badrabbit11• 4 years ago

Ok, but their responsibility is first and foremost to earn a living. It is the government's job to define and prevent exploitation.

benjaminwootton• 4 years ago

I tend to agree. If you go into it with your eyes open then it’s just a transaction. Its a real investment on behalf of the company, and you are even getting something valuable.

I think there are more important things in the workers rights sphere to get angry about.

hnbad3• 4 years ago

What you're missing is that unlike e.g. a university degree, the job training is usually non-transferrable. You're not paying to earn a qualification you can re-use later or to find a better paying job once you earned some experience. You're paying to become a Brand™ certified professional corporate drone on the designated Brand, Inc. career track. If you want to apply at OtherCo later, you'll have to become an OtherCo™ certified professional corporate drone and pay for that training too.

This is functionally no different from the difference between a salesperson and an MLM drone: instead of selling the company's stock on behalf of the company, you buy products at a discount and then resell them but are also required to cycle out your stock periodically and eat the cost of any unsold goods. The perpetual excess stock creates lock-in and the sunk cost locks makes you want to keep trying to make back your losses.

There's nothing wrong with paid job training programmes in a country where a significant amount of higher education is provided by for-profit organizations. There is however a perverse incentive when these job training programmes are provided by same the companies making participation in these programmes a requirement for applying to them. Even if the qualifications are "real" (i.e. transferrable), it represents a clear conflict of interest.

daniel-cussen4• 4 years ago

Well so it's sad but colleges with big endowments invest "growth industries" (obviously prefer growth) some of which grow as college becomes more expensive. Very synergistic. Stanford does this but in like classy opportunities, then the rest, hey there's big endowments in lots of colleges nowadays tons of them are unicorns now, they invested wisely! And say those tuitions room and boards are huge! Glad I got the dropout discount, beyond financial aid (whatever I did or didn't get) it cut down the price of the education dramatically. Just stop paying stop going, simple as that.

And let me address dropping out of Stanford in other ways: first that's what I always wanted was to drop out of Stanford; I was never ever going to graduate in a million years barely kept up; then I don't get asked for a GPA ("F as in fuck you", no clue what the GPA is); then further, I front-loaded my classes so put the cool classes first and the required classes never; then at any rate it was more of an impasse than a true act of dropping out, I was told I could enroll after paying a third successive fee, each fee immediately replaced by a new fee, well couldn't enroll fine, done, had to do it before 4 full years too. And most of all--if I did graduate Stanford would rescind my degree, which they have the legal right to do for any reason they see fit. Then not only would I not have a degree after all that sacrifice and submission the whole fifth year saying fifth year student being excluded from everything, like everything asks what year you are that's the reason, it's weird. No word for them, fifth year, not freshman sophomore junior senior, don't even get mentioned. But they can never take away my dropping out. Stanford dropout.

And get this, this is difficult to plagiarize so I'm going to share: I was in a club and was asked where I had gone to school, just blurted "Oh, I dropped out of Stanford!" It has to be real though, you actually have to drop out of Stanford for this line to work. That's what I mean difficult to plagiarize. But if you did great! Name a single other Stanford dropout. Can you? Sam Altman? Honorary degree from Waterloo. Evan Spiegel? Went back and graduated for his son's sake. Tiger Woods I would say yes, dropped out of undergrad plus in golf it's critical to drop out, Michelle Wie of my year did the same thing for the same reasons. Athlete. There's actresses--also makes perfect sense to drop out then, there's actresses who graduate and it kills their career, in one case she was too old especially to get her career started, Hollywood formally preferred that she drop out.

Elizabeth Holmes did it for real, like yes she's dealing with criminal charges but she's paying the price after all, and she played her cards right in so many ways, put a company together and could possibly have come up with the tech after the fact. Allowing for like crazy lies fine a bullshit artist but unrivaled bullshit artist, like Adam Neumann also. Master bullshitters. But masters all the same. So right morally legally strategically bad move, Holmes was first doing the company-building, like the sales the dealing with investors (some say that's the hardest part in business) the valuation, the image, the persona, the bravado, the connections, pulling it off without a female precedent solo founder, having no precedent is rough. Like yeah she lied and needed to stretch, and then keep stretching, but it was conceivable the company she formed could actually make the tech properly. And dude I in fact vouch that Stanford CS majors practically or literally all cheat. It wasn't pure bullshit, there were experiments carried out that actually worked, there was some merit, and in fact good that the Stanford profs said it couldn't be done dude ask me all about that, there's impossible problems it's legitimate to attempt them. It's a very good sign that it be considered impossible for reasons that can't be conveyed trivially. But it was still a full-time job (probably around the clock), and on top of all that--she actually remained a dropout to this day. An actual undergraduate techie dropout. It's not a failure by any means to be a dropout. Except from--in many cases--the first person point-of-view, feeling incomplete without a degree.

But dropouts are critical to the American economy, the majority of FAANG founders and co-founders were dropouts. The majority.

badrabbit11• 4 years ago

Consider IT certs, cooking skills, professional licenses,etc... for those it makes sense.

Look at GIAC certs for example, with training it costs close to 10k. Most people can't afford that without employers paying for it and it is transferable.

adriancr2• 4 years ago

I have been saddled with debt of over 7K$ for in the job training but I see absolutley no problem with this.

Had a friend in a similar situation at start of his career.

He saw no problem until he found out he was making 50% what peers from other companies did

He couldn't leave without paying out the 'trainings' or waiting for them to expire after 2 years (which were unnecessary, very poor quality and extremely overpriced - 5000-10000$ for a 3-5 day java course done by people within the company at no cost to company...)

He wouldn't get any raises if he didn't accept further expensive trainings.

Doing any new trainings renewed existing debt too... because why not.

Eventually, after 3-4 years, he manned up, told them to pound salt, got a lawyer and ended up convincing a huge chunk of his team to also leave.

badrabbit11• 4 years ago

Did he know about lack of promotions dependent on more trainings when he first signed the agreement? If not, I can see how that is deceptive and fraudulent on the company's behalf.

fzeroracer2• 4 years ago

Similar to non-competes we all lose if companies broadly adopt provisions like this into their hiring schemes. And just because something is in a contract doesn't make it morally right. You could waive your rights to your kidneys when you sign up for a job and your argument would equally apply but I would say most people would agree that a company shouldn't be able to harvest kidneys as a condition of employment.

bestcoder693• 4 years ago

To jump to the root of the issue, what you're missing is that you're valuing the rights of the contract over the outcomes for these employees.

Myself, I would like the lives of these affected employees to be better rather than worse, and I'll trade away the enforcement of these agreements in order to get that.

Also, the problem with slavery and indentured servitude wasn't that they were illegal.

And, you could invoke voluntaryism but, like, look how pervasive forced arbitration and IP assignment clauses are - you can't realistically "volunteer" your way out of them nowadays.

badrabbit11• 4 years ago

Why are the outcomes relevant if you agreed to them knowing them beforehand and without coercion?

About being illegal, I am not talking about that either, legal or not if you agree to something having all the facts clearly portrayed to you, you are responsible for what happens if you agree to it.

I think the real root cause is you and others seem to think lack of alternate opportunities equates coercion, which I disagree with. I also disagree that improvement of people's lives can be more important than basic fairness,equality, accountability and justice. You are only formalizing fraud and corruption that way.

You make a good point about forced arbitration, but with that it isn't specific but general to cover all disputes which you don't know when you sign that agreement. It also circumvents legal procedure where even if you think it is in your best interest and agree to it, it isn't in the interest of justice. Oh and how is that not enforced but plea agreements are?? (Is there anything more slavery like than prison???)

ElfinTrousers• 4 years ago

"You know, I am pretty vocal about worker rights"...followed by five paragraphs of arguing against them. You sure about that first statement?

badrabbit11• 4 years ago

Yes I am. Rights, not arbitrary wishlists. I also require reason, fairness and justice.

alistairSH5• 4 years ago

Contracts generally require consideration and legality (in addition to other things).

Consideration means both parties receive benefit from the contract.

Those who disagree with these employment practices will argue that the contracts fail one or both of those requirements.

Legality - we outlaw debt peonage. Do these contacts attempt to create a peonage situations? If so, the contracts are not valid.

Consideration - do both parties receive benefit from the contract? Depending on how the contract is written, it might fail on this as well.

badrabbit11• 4 years ago

Thanks for the explanation and I agree with all that. In my case, it was required training I could take with me elsewhere or pay upfront without having to commit to a specific employer.

My employer has paid for my IT certs stipulating a hefty debt if I leave in less than a year.

Assuming you are getting paid a living wage and the obligation is for a year or less I see no problem at all.

cycomanic2• 4 years ago

Ryanair is pretty famous for pulling this stuff on mainly young women from poorer parts of Europe, like Romania for working as cabin crew.

Essentially they lure them with comparatively high salaries but they have to pay some training fee. The salary doesn't end up that high, because they have to relocate to more expensive areas, they also only get paid for the actual time on the plane, disregarding the prep and checking times and they have to buy the horribly overpriced plane food. So they end up not being able to pay back their training fee. This really should be cracked down on hard.

johnchristopher2• 4 years ago

How Ryanair is allowed to operate in the EU never ceases to baffle and disgust me.

Raptor22• 4 years ago

It's literally initialed TRAP. This is Looney Tunes levels of villainy.

C'mon, corporate America, at least put in the effort to make the dystopia believable.

billpg• 4 years ago

They're sorta saying the quiet bit out loud there.

runamok• 4 years ago

Seriously. They are not even trying to pretend they are not sociopaths.

cvccvroomvroom• 4 years ago

Aren't student loans from the Navients and such predators of young adults who get fleeced by universities binging on their wallets the macro economic distributed version of debt peonage? Why can't college be cheaper by like 2-3 orders of magnitude and reign in overspending on buildings and vast bureaucracies of excessive expenditure. I know of a university who has billions in endowment who leveled a $30 million USD donated office complex less than 8 years old to spend another $75 million on parking and another office building. The same university that spent $150 million on software that was never delivered.

astura• 4 years ago

A close relative of mine who was unemployed was offered a job but they had to sign one of these agreements as a condition of employment and asked for my advice.

I advised against taking the job because the salary wasn't great and it's risky to commit an entire year to a job where you have zero idea about the working conditions yet! I was also thinking the employer might have added this clause because they are having retention issues, which is an indication of poor working conditions. The training also kinda sounded like BS and the cost seemed very arbitrary.

They decided against that job. They said they'd take the job without the training payback requirement but it was mandatory.

The family member was in a position to not take the job because their spouse was making enough money to support their entire family, but not everyone has that luxury. It seems like only the people who are most desperate will take these jobs.

It's bananas these "training payback agreements" are becoming common!!!

lgrebe• 4 years ago

Would this happen in a „purpose-economy“ with steward-ownership?

More on the topic in this TedX talk: https://youtu.be/Z2Uy_ODDiZo

jimnotgym• 4 years ago

In the UK the Good Law Project faught and won a case against exactly this. Link below

https://goodlawproject.org/news/significant-win-capita-ends-...

kurupt213• 4 years ago

That’s an unfortunate acronym. The story kind of writes itself. Charging for training is worse than the unpaid internship.

deskamess• 4 years ago

Very common in India or at least used to be.

bronco210162• 4 years ago

This has been a long standing practice for pilots. Operators would have the pilot sign a training contract requiring either repayment or some number of years of service. The reasoning is most operators will spend $20-30k+ getting a pilot fully certified for their aircraft and operation.

I successfully avoided any of those situations but the common knowledge was that you could walk away and tell the prior employer to stuff it. It’s not worth their time and effort to pursue it beyond some threatening phone calls. I’m not a lawyer obviously.

zzbzq• 4 years ago

There's a difference if someone is trained in real difficult skills over a long period of time, vs. given standard training to do a minimum wage-tier job for 10 hours by their minimum wage co-workers, and then told it's worth $7,500+ of debt.

bronco210162• 4 years ago

I don’t disagree. I think my point centers more around the idea that most of these “agreements” can safely be ignored. Again, not a lawyer.

dudeinjapan• 4 years ago

While I'm completely against these TRAP provisions, playing devil's advocate here, most colleges aren't exactly training useful skills these days, so I kind of get why employers would want to charge for actual training.

pneumatic1• 4 years ago

I was a carpenter in my early 20s and the owner of a company said he was going to sue me for the cost of some very specific training since I quit after only working for him for 9 months. It was pretty valuable training and I definitely used it to get my next job.

I said I'd sue him for wages he owed from when he paid everyone non-union rates on a union job site. Also not requiring use of personal vehicles and not reimbursing for mileage.

That was the end of it. He was sued for that reason a couple of years later by the local union itself. He just folded the entity and made a new one. I'm sure he is still treating people the same way.

Karsteski• 4 years ago

In Ontario, these types of employee contracts are not enforceable[1]. And at least in the case of Canada, I doubt they would actually try to enforce these contracts lest the same conclusion be formally reached in other provinces, destroying these companies' business models.

Just a heads up for anyone in Canada that thinks they are trapped under one of these companies. Just leave if you want.

[1] https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2021/03/23/temp-agency-bill...

Tangurena22• 4 years ago

This isn't new. I worked at GM when they bought EDS. Chatting with some of the folks who were moved over to EDS (they took over all IT functions as I understood it), they mentioned having to attend "training" every year and if you left within 2 years of that particular training, you were required to repay that training (which was several thousand dollars per year - in the mid 80s). I was outraged, but the guys I talked with seemed to be OK with it.

danjoredd2• 4 years ago

What happens if you don't attend the training?

Tangurena22• 4 years ago

It was described as mandatory, although you had a choice of which courses you wanted to take. The impression I was left with was that they believed that the company would never fire them (this would have been true for GM, but not for EDS, for whom they now worked).

The culture at GM was such that a lot of people were "lifers". The book "The Organization Man" [0] seemed to describe how many people lived/acted. EDS was founded by Ross Perot, who was a very charismatic person [1]. He was also a "love him or hate him - there's no in between" person. I admired his ability to stir up GM and I remember many of his antics that annoyed the pants off of the board at GM [2]. According to Perot, the culture at IBM was also full of "lifers" which led to his founding EDS.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Organization_Man

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot > Perot joined the Boy Scouts of America and made Eagle Scout in 1942, after 13 months in the program. After 2 years as a scout, I was still a tenderfoot. :)

2 - He annoyed the board so much that they ended up paying him over $100M to go away (his shares were promised to be between $X & $Y, so they payed the difference between market and $X). I thought that he had a chance to make changes at GM and turn the company around. The execs were terribly insulated from reality, but they chose to live in their bubble rather than do the (painful) things that GM needed to do to survive.

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