6 ms·

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.

• Thorrez 4y 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.
  • _8j50 4y ago
    I agree with them in principle but unless that is law it is a meaningless sentiment.
  • Ferret7446 4y ago
    There's an easy solution for that, don't sign contracts that have a TRAP clause.
• somesortofthing 4y 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.
  • _8j50 4y 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.
• ckw 4y ago
  People who accept gross exploitation harm everyone who works.
  • _8j50 4y ago
    Ok, but their responsibility is first and foremost to earn a living. It is the government's job to define and prevent exploitation.
    • ckw 4y ago
      I agree. And I have been in a position where I had to accept exploitation. But I also think that workers often have some agency, and to the extent they do they should use it to protect those who don’t. Examples would be saving enough money to quit in protest of poor treatment, or becoming particularly valuable to the company for the same reason.
• YinLuck- 4y ago
• benjaminwootton 4y 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.
• hnbad 4y 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-cussen 4y 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.
• adriancr 4y 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.
  • _8j50 4y 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.
    • adriancr 4y ago
      You don't see how mandatory internal trainings with cost associated to them are predatory/fraudulent? And no, of course he did not know, do you think a company such as that advertises that they are taking advantage of you?
      • _8j50 4y ago
        Yes, many advertise and I accepted that risk before. If they hide it or trick people that should be criminal fraud not just civil lawsuit.
• fzeroracer 4y 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.
• bestcoder69 4y 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.
  • _8j50 4y 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???)
    • bestcoder69 4y ago
      > Why are the outcomes relevant if you agreed to them knowing them beforehand and without coercion? See my statement of my values vs yours. You're just on the other side. There's nothing left to understand. I'll skip the coercion point because that requires mind-reading, plus it requires me to believe that literally anyone reads a contract ever, and people will choose poverty if they can't find an employment agreement they like and understand. If you want to define coercion to the point that it's useless, that's fine, but let's pick a new word and move on if it makes you happy. "Pressure"? > Is there anything more slavery like than prison??? You seem to think lack of opportunities equates to coercion. Also, the bit about being generally in favor of worker's rights makes your post a concern troll. I wasn't born yesterday, I know what right to work, at-will employment, and reason.com are.
• ElfinTrousers 4y ago
  "You know, I am pretty vocal about worker rights"...followed by five paragraphs of arguing against them. You sure about that first statement?
  • _8j50 4y ago
    Yes I am. Rights, not arbitrary wishlists. I also require reason, fairness and justice.
• alistairSH 4y 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.
  • _8j50 4y 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.
    • alistairSH 4y ago
      Sounds like we agree. I have no problem with optional certification/degree programs paid for by employers, with a reasonable payback period. The PetSmart program doesn't sound like it provides any value to the employee and serves only to force the employee to stay at PetSmart under less-than-ideal circumstances.