Corporate America's New Ploy to Trap Workers

https://www.levernews.com/corporate-americas-new-ploy-to-trap-workers/

by Avshalom • 11 months ago

22 9 11 months ago

toomuchtodo• 11 months ago

duxup• 11 months ago

I don't think the hidden training cost thing is new. It's not right ... but it's also not clear if it is on the rise either.

al_borland• 11 months ago

How can these possibly be valid contracts if the employee isn’t aware of them? By that logic, the employee could make up their own “contract” that says the company owes them double.

It makes sense that an employer wouldn’t want to invest in significant training just to have the employee turn around and leverage it into a new job, but that could be clearly stated and agreed to up front, with the employee knowing what the agreed upon term is before they are free and clear. I’ve received retention bonuses in the past, which worked like this. They gave me a bonus, and if I left within 3 years, I had to pay it back. I had the option to not take it. The rub on that was that I think I would have had to pay back the gross value, not the net of what I received after tax. It never came to that though, I stayed the 3 years. I had to sign a similar contract when getting a relocation package.

impossiblefork• 11 months ago

According to legal experts who have litigated these cases, the amount of debt levied on workers is often conjured up by employers once an employee leaves, rather than being stipulated in the contract.

If this is the state of US contract law, how can you do business there? Surely this is bullshit? If it really is this bad, and the judges don't understand why it's a problem, then why is there a US economy?

If it is real, I assume it's literally only applied against poor people? I don't have to fear this in business contracts when I start a company?

glaarinee2• 11 months ago

Often people don't have the knowledge or the money to contest a bad contract. Often they are just harassed and intimidated into compliance.

Buttons8402• 11 months ago

If a random company decide they want you specifically to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars, they can send their legal team after you, and you will end up spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal defense. You'll probably win in the end, and the company will say "our bad, lol", and that will be the end of it.

deezmofonutz• 11 months ago

Simpsons did it:

https://youtu.be/u5y2gS54KfE?si=_9eF5_V9K-p6XEwb

glaarinee2• 11 months ago

I have at some point noped out of a selection process after carefully reading the contracts and terms of service involved.

The company in question asked us new hires on the first day to "apply again" through this "matching platform". The person beside me happily agreed to everything and started. I said I need to go through everything and went home.

It was only after a couple of hours and several red flags that I found the trap: the terms of service for the "matching platform" mentioned abuse and described the exact thing the company did in detail as an example: recruiting and selecting off platform then offering a contract through the platform to use their 'temp agency' contract. It also said that candidates that failed to report this abuse would be liable to pay a fine of several thousand plus possible damages. In retrospect I can see some of the things they did onboarding the person beside me while I was spooked and reading everything that could later be pointed as cause for damages.

I was also shocked to share this with people close to me and get a lot of glazed over eyes and people not understanding it and focusing on the "weirdness" of wanting to read everything because apparently it's just normal to sign documents without reading them.

I can see now why this sort of thing happens. People really do just sign documents and go along with things without asking very basic questions. Luckily I have worked as an independent contractor long enough to never accept terms I do not thoroughly understand.

Buttons8402• 11 months ago

I was also shocked ... glazed over eyes and people not understanding ... apparently it's just normal to sign documents without reading them.

And this is why it's so common.

It seems the only options are (1) just swallow the whole bottle of crazy pills and accept that your insane for caring about contracts, or (2) throw your morals in the trash and exploit the stupid people who don't read contracts.

I've seen this myself in multiple places I've worked. I mention parts of the employment contract that bother me and co-workers look at me weird and say "mine didn't have that". Bro, I guarantee your contract said the same thing, but you didn't read it.

And sometimes I can't really blame people. It's really stressful and aggravating to read an employment contract; a great way to start a existential crisis.

But at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what an employment contract says, because "those with power can screw up your life if they really want to" remains the same no matter what the employment contract says.

A company can always have their legal department hound you to the ends of the Earth, forcing you to spend a few hundred thousand dollars defending yourself, and yeah, you might win in the end, and the company will say "our bad, lol", but you're still out a few hundred thousand dollars.

So in a way, what does it matter if a company can fine you a few thousand dollars. They can do the same by abusing our legal system against any person.

Corporate America's New Ploy to Trap Workers

Related Stories