Posted on 10/21/2022 4:47:31 AM PDT by EBH
Workers quit in high numbers over the past few years — sometimes after being at the job under a year.
Some employers are demanding that quitting workers reimburse them for their training costs.
These agreements have generally been upheld in court, but are beginning to come under more scrutiny.
Companies have grappled with labor shortages over the last few years as workers have quit at near-record rates. Now some businesses are trying to make it more costly for employees to join the Great Resignation.
Nearly 10% of US workers are covered by training repayment agreement provisions, according to a study from the Cornell Survey Research Institute, first reported on by Reuters. These provisions, or "TRAPS" as critics calls them, require workers to reimburse their employer for some of their job training costs if they quit too soon.
Most prevalent in the healthcare, trucking, and retail industries, these agreements can cost quitting workers thousands of dollars. The Student Borrower Protection Center estimated in July that these agreements are prevalent in industries that collectively employ over one-third of US private-sector workers.
"Employers are looking for ways to keep their workers from quitting without raising wages or improving working conditions," Jonathan Harris, an associate law professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, told Reuters.
Over the last several years, there's been an increase in not just quitting, but "quick quitting" — leaving one's job after less than 12 months, according to LinkedIn data. This was up nearly 10% versus the prior year as of March and remains elevated today.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
"Employers are looking for ways to keep their workers from quitting without raising wages or improving working conditions," Jonathan Harris, an associate law professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, told Reuters.
There's nothing wrong with making an employee hold up their side of the employment agreement, Jonathan.
An unjust contract that demands a penalty if you quit to recover “training expenses” is just slavery. You are the type of sick animal that rounded up Apple workers in China and put them back on their “campus”/prison. Sod off.
Good post—if you “force” an employee to stay you may get the half-baked labor that you deserve from an indentured servant—until they quit the day after the indentured servitude requirements have been met.
Am I just contract in unenforceable. There is piles of case law that sets legal as this practice. As an employer I risk not getting an employee If I am to onerous. But why should I Train people for the competition.
The best answer is if course if an employee wants training they are free to pay for it independently. That called the free market.
Something you apparently do not support. Workers of the world unite, eh WMarshal? I agree with qwerty. You are on the wrong board. Complete with the knee jerk liberal response of calling people slave holders.
You are some piece of work. Go have a sit in with the other reds. Let me know how it works out for you. Write when you get work. We love you.
Right - it’s the CDL training where those payback clauses generally get attached, which seems pretty fair to me.
No-compete clauses have been around a long time.
Yes, a free market in which the workers themselves can determine some of the terms of their contracts is frightful to corporatists, the Cheap Labor Express and maybe certain folks at the Cato Institute. I think taking the side of the workers isn’t always harmful.
This whole dynamic of exploitation, when it actually does happen, is also why labor unions will be necessary and useful in certain cases, even though they can also be a bane to actual free markets.
In the Third World people sign contracts every day to sell their children into slavery, do you want those contacts enforced?
Legalism is a form of oppression and you are dumb enough to love it. Despicable.
In the Third World people sign contracts every day to sell their children into slavery, do you want those contacts enforced?
Legalism is a form of oppression and you are dumb enough to love it. Despicable.
I could see legitimacy in charging training costs if the employer paid for a third-party, certified institution to train the employees and the employees e on the hook for that bill. However I can just see woke employers try to bill quitting workers for their in-house diversity, equity and inclusion training delivered by a Democratic Party apparatchik.
Me too. My kid’s course cost $5000. But there was some sort of $4000 grant so he got off light.
No its not. In trucking, many companies pay for you to be trained and certified to drive a big rig. This costs money and the companies expect you to work for them to offset the cost. Otherwise they get free training and then bug out.
Most have a clause that you have to pay for the training if you quit before a certain time period. YOU agree to this ahead of time. It is not a trap or disguised in any way.
Courts have said otherwise.
And courts have said the exact opposite. It depends on the day and the venue.
Thanks; I’m middle-aged and I’m shocked at how the relationship between employers and employees has changed in the last 30 years. I suspect a lot of it is related to the failure of wages to keep up with costs, coupled with the endless spigot of imported workers available to employers.
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