8 ms·

Yeah, it does suck. Sometimes doing business sucks. Holding on to your employees against their will in return for money also sucks for everyone involved.

gjsman-1000 4y ago
I would argue a little bit contrary. Expensive training by the business is an investment in you. If you sign up for the training, you are telling the business that you will return their investment and benefit them. Thus, there is a degree to which leaving immediately after expensive training can be seen as theft. This might not gain much sympathy when talking of mega corporations, but consider 48% of US Jobs are for small businesses, where the theft of your training can be much more real. Edit: If I am a small business, imagine I had 10 employees. Training for a niche industry may be much more expensive because I can’t afford to have a standardized training program, and some employees have to be unproductive to teach the new employee how to be productive. Imagine this costs $8K, and then the employee leaves. Sucks. Now imagine 8 people in a row did this.
- frumper 4y ago
  There is a reason they’re quitting. Could be the pay is low, or they don’t like the job. Maybe they aren’t very good at it after all. Throw in some sick parents they need to take care of and top it off with a manager that is awful to work for. Holding a financial gun to someone’s head isn’t a good way to handle this for anyone. What if someone gets fired, do they have to repay it?
  - gjsman-1000 4y ago
    If they knew the terms of the deal, knew the cost of their training, and agreed, it is exactly like if you joined college and changed your major in my eyes. You don’t get off the hook for those bills because you changed your mind, and you knew what you were getting into.
    - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
      Changing a major doesn't occur financial penalties, and colleges also allow you to take extremely extended leaves (3+ months, aka a semester/quarter) for emergencies as a normal point of cause and your education credits don't expire for several years (I think a decade?) so if an emergency happens you can step away and return even years later with fairly minimal penalty academically. Credits aren't even charged if you quit early enough IIRC.
      - stonemetal12 4y ago
        If you took out a loan to pay tuition, the loans don't disappear. Isn't this basically the same thing? The employer is loaning you the money to cover training with loan forgiveness for time worked.
        frumper 4y ago
        Schools are highly regulated. Loans are highly regulated. Education from colleges is accredited and held accountable to third party institutions. Employers training you then charging you isn't regulated at all. It's ripe for abuse and clearly abuse is taking place to the woman in the article.
        PuppyTailWags 4y ago
        No, because the employer isn't loaning you money. In fact it would make much more sense if the employer gave the employee money as a lump sum in exchange for some agreement, much like a relocation or signing bonus. Instead this is the employer pretending its training is worth real money on the real market. In the Reuters article, an esthecian was charged nearly 2k for leaving a shitty job because of "training", despite already independently having the license necessary to do the job and no one reasonably paying that beauty parlor 2k to be educated. Additionally, certain education-related loans do in fact disappear! Loan forgiveness is a real thing.
    - bena 4y ago
      It's a little more complicated than that. It could be that the place is offering training as a carrot and overpricing it as a means of suppressing pay to their employees. So you get a junior developer for half the cost for whatever the length of the payback period is OR you get the cost of a couple of junior developers paid to you by that person. Not to mention, you could only learn that they're severely underpaying you once you get into the industry. And when you absolutely need a job, you'll get desperate enough to take some bad deals. Because the alternative is destitution.
  - dncornholio 4y ago
    Why does the reason matter? If you invest in your employee, you want to see something back. It's not cool to take free training if you know you will be out shortly. The reason people go out can be anything, could be something silly like moving house. "just be a better company" sounds like people live in a fantasy world
    - skinnymuch 4y ago
      It sounds like your last line is saying corporations are too corrupt and broken to be as good as human beings? It’s not cool to force training on someone and then force them to stay or pay it back either. Why does the corporation get off the hook?
      - dncornholio 4y ago
        My point is, corporations can be just as corrupt as the employees and vice versa. Also, you can have a perfect working place, but people will still leave your company. It would suck if people would leave after you've invested in them and I understand companies want some sort of insurance.
        skinnymuch 4y ago
        I find it hard to imagine people being more corrupt than corporations the vast majority of the time. Especially pilots vs corporations. The insane power imbalance and the capitalist society we live in makes it highly unlikely individual middle class people are close to as corrupt as corps. Also, the companies should get some sort of insurance. Not screw over individual powerless people.
        frumper 4y ago
        It does suck. Companies should buy an insurance plan from a company that sells insurance if they want insurance. If the company is good at keeping trainees then that'll reflect in their premiums. If they're bad, they should figure out why they're bad.
    - ryandrake 4y ago
- Kon-Peki 4y ago
  > If you sign up for the training, you are telling the business that you will return their investment and benefit them. Is the business offering a similar guarantee to the employee?
  - randomdata 4y ago
    I don't imagine businesses are expending these capital costs with the intention of closing up shop the next day. So, yes, clearly.
    - FireBeyond 4y ago
      Hah, what? I have watched personally multiple household name companies go on hiring sprees when layoffs, that those line and department managers were aware of, were imminent. Tacoma FD for one locally high visibility action: Advertised for the hiring of 30-44 firefighters. Had a few thousand applicants. Rented the Tacoma Dome for several days for testing applicants. Went through the selection process, got their candidates, put them through nearly six months of full-time training. They all graduate from Academy... ... and come to their station the next morning to get a pink slip. They literally trained these people and let them go the moment they finished training, before they could do one day of actual work. Because there was no budget to pay them. A budget that had been signed off by the City nearly six months -before- the hiring process began.
      - randomdata 4y ago
        What, what? Intention doesn't mean things can't go wrong. A lot can go wrong as time marches forward and your expectations turn out to be incorrect. Tacoma FD no doubt intended to keep those firefighters on staff, even if it didn't work out that way in the end. A business won't necessarily realize benefit from training, but they do offer a similar guarantee to the workers that they may also not realize a benefit. If things turn out as planned, both will benefit. Benefit is not without risk. Those who can't handle the risk seek shelter elsewhere. Such is life.
- csydas 4y ago
  Your point is understood, but at the same time, if it's not a recognized certification that is applicable to other jobs and positions, then it's a preference of the business, not a business need. The employer decided to make this a requirement for their employees, that is their decision and they should accept the cost. More simply put, if it's not something that is readily verifiable and accepted by any other business in the same category, then I understand this as the employers' _choice_ to give their employees this business. Would we consider the same reimbursement scheme for coffee/snacks and restroom breaks? These also are on paid time which costs the employer, but I don't think (yet) employers are trying to recoup such costs. If we were talking about professional certifications, I would maybe understand some commitment agreement from the employees, but the trainings described are shop specific as per the article. I would not agree that this should require repayment, and seems the courts agree as well.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  The fundamental trade businesses make with employees is that they remove risk from the employee's life in return for removing the potential rewards that come from having a successful business. If you add back a component of risk, you are making the trade a lot less attractive.
- Buttons840 4y ago
  Do these small companies want employees who feign incompetence and "quiet quit"? Because paying for training is no guarantee the employee will be a profitable one, contract or not.
- xivzgrev 4y ago
  There could be room for that. But the article cites several examples not like that, particularly training that employees consider rudimentary or already covering what they already know. It sounds like bullshit because it is - employers are trying to get employees to stay, and some use a stick to do so.
- wing-_-nuts 4y ago
  >Training for a niche industry may be much more expensive because I can’t afford to have a standardized training program, and some employees have to be unproductive to teach the new employee how to be productive. I vehemently disagree with this. If your training is so niche as to not be standardized (and thus, have value in the marketplace), you absolutely should not get to go after the employee. If they leave? Tough. Work on retainment if you wish your company to be successful. With this line of reasoning, every business down to restaurants with fry cooks could argue they are imparting valuable wisdom and thus hold their employees indentured. This is not some hypothetical to me. My ancestors were indentured servants to the Jamestown colony.
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    > My ancestors were indentured servants to the Jamestown colony So what? This affects your life how?
    - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
      It's impossible for me to take this question in good faith if you have any reading comprehension at all.
- FireBeyond 4y ago
  > If you sign up for the training IF. In many of these cases, employees show up, are told that they are "required" to undergo training that the company has now enrolled them in and that they will be required to repay.
leeroyjenkins11 4y ago
You mean when the employee voluntarily agrees to the terms of the contract? I have seen when employees take advantage of job training and then immediately bounce when their contract expires for that. They used 6months of code camp training while being paid, and as soon as they could they left. If those contracts were not allowed, there wouldn't be a company willing to pay for that. When you sign a lease you usually can't break the lease without penalty.yes, if a company makes up the training costs for in house training, making it astronomical, then that seems like it'd be up for litigation.
- deadbunny 4y ago
  I'm assuming* they all bounced as soon as they could because with their newly acquired skills they could go get vastly more money. I'm also assuming the employer refused to up their pay to "market rates" because, hey they invested in them, they should stick around (for below market rate) because we're all a big family and we invest in our family. * Assumption based on the exact scenario happening every fucking time
- adrianN 4y ago
  Employees voluntarily agreeing to contracts means very little without a lot of context. Generally speaking the power differential between companies and employees is too great for any meaningful "voluntary" action on the part of employees.
  - zo1 4y ago
    Let's all not forget the most "voluntary" contract of all: the "social contract" between the lowly individual and the all-powerful state. Apparently there wasn't a power differential there, right? Purely consensual and I had full choice in not signing it.
    - SuoDuanDao 4y ago
      Okay, but the social contract defends you from the violence of everyone else starting a few months before you're actually born. Sure, it might not be a great contract even given that, and I agree it should be easier to shop around the social contract you want (or that there should be the option not to have one a la seasteading). But given how much it provides before someone is able to understand the terms of a contract like that, it makes sense for it to be opt-in.
refurb 4y ago
It's a contract. Don't sign it if you don't like the terms.
- nucleogenesis 4y ago
  Of course - if you want to eat and have a house and make money and your options are limited due to the lack of any societal norm that people should be cared for and you weren’t privileged to have opportunities to or the the ability to develop skills that are worth money — then you should just be homeless instead of signing yourself into 10s of thousands of dollars of debt to a corporation. Or you should be grateful for the opportunity to be contractually enslaved?
  - refurb 4y ago
    Are you saying semi-skilled jobs are hard to come by? That the woman in the article that was a hairdresser couldn't possibly find another hairdressing job? The other example from the article was nursing. Nursing is in huge demand. That woman most certainly had other options. I worked in Europe. My contract said my company had to give me 3 months notice before quitting. And I had to give 3 months notice before quitting. If I didn't, I had to pay the company the equivalent of 1 months salary for each month of notice I didn't give. So if I just up and quit, I'd have to pay 3 months salary. Was I a "indentured servant" too?
    - Buttons840 4y ago
      > Nursing is in huge demand. That woman most certainly had other options. Part of the problem is the people creating the contracts are perfectly willing to place the burden on existing nurses and allow patients to suffer. Even when already short staffed, hospitals are not under much pressure to renegotiate a contract.
    - AlexandrB 4y ago
      > And I had to give 3 months notice before quitting. That's pretty crazy. So if you apply to a new job you have to tell them: "I can start 3 months from now, no sooner"? Edit: This kind of clause seems so counter-productive to the employer. If I was forced to give 3 months notice, I'd be checked out for 2/3+ of that time. What are they going to do? Fire me?

gjsman-1000 4y ago

I would argue a little bit contrary. Expensive training by the business is an investment in you. If you sign up for the training, you are telling the business that you will return their investment and benefit them. Thus, there is a degree to which leaving immediately after expensive training can be seen as theft. This might not gain much sympathy when talking of mega corporations, but consider 48% of US Jobs are for small businesses, where the theft of your training can be much more real. Edit: If I am a small business, imagine I had 10 employees. Training for a niche industry may be much more expensive because I can’t afford to have a standardized training program, and some employees have to be unproductive to teach the new employee how to be productive. Imagine this costs $8K, and then the employee leaves. Sucks. Now imagine 8 people in a row did this.

frumper 4y ago
There is a reason they’re quitting. Could be the pay is low, or they don’t like the job. Maybe they aren’t very good at it after all. Throw in some sick parents they need to take care of and top it off with a manager that is awful to work for. Holding a financial gun to someone’s head isn’t a good way to handle this for anyone. What if someone gets fired, do they have to repay it?
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  If they knew the terms of the deal, knew the cost of their training, and agreed, it is exactly like if you joined college and changed your major in my eyes. You don’t get off the hook for those bills because you changed your mind, and you knew what you were getting into.
  - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
    Changing a major doesn't occur financial penalties, and colleges also allow you to take extremely extended leaves (3+ months, aka a semester/quarter) for emergencies as a normal point of cause and your education credits don't expire for several years (I think a decade?) so if an emergency happens you can step away and return even years later with fairly minimal penalty academically. Credits aren't even charged if you quit early enough IIRC.
    - stonemetal12 4y ago
      If you took out a loan to pay tuition, the loans don't disappear. Isn't this basically the same thing? The employer is loaning you the money to cover training with loan forgiveness for time worked.
      - frumper 4y ago
        Schools are highly regulated. Loans are highly regulated. Education from colleges is accredited and held accountable to third party institutions. Employers training you then charging you isn't regulated at all. It's ripe for abuse and clearly abuse is taking place to the woman in the article.
      - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
        No, because the employer isn't loaning you money. In fact it would make much more sense if the employer gave the employee money as a lump sum in exchange for some agreement, much like a relocation or signing bonus. Instead this is the employer pretending its training is worth real money on the real market. In the Reuters article, an esthecian was charged nearly 2k for leaving a shitty job because of "training", despite already independently having the license necessary to do the job and no one reasonably paying that beauty parlor 2k to be educated. Additionally, certain education-related loans do in fact disappear! Loan forgiveness is a real thing.
  - bena 4y ago
    It's a little more complicated than that. It could be that the place is offering training as a carrot and overpricing it as a means of suppressing pay to their employees. So you get a junior developer for half the cost for whatever the length of the payback period is OR you get the cost of a couple of junior developers paid to you by that person. Not to mention, you could only learn that they're severely underpaying you once you get into the industry. And when you absolutely need a job, you'll get desperate enough to take some bad deals. Because the alternative is destitution.
- dncornholio 4y ago
  Why does the reason matter? If you invest in your employee, you want to see something back. It's not cool to take free training if you know you will be out shortly. The reason people go out can be anything, could be something silly like moving house. "just be a better company" sounds like people live in a fantasy world
  - skinnymuch 4y ago
    It sounds like your last line is saying corporations are too corrupt and broken to be as good as human beings? It’s not cool to force training on someone and then force them to stay or pay it back either. Why does the corporation get off the hook?
    - dncornholio 4y ago
      My point is, corporations can be just as corrupt as the employees and vice versa. Also, you can have a perfect working place, but people will still leave your company. It would suck if people would leave after you've invested in them and I understand companies want some sort of insurance.
      - skinnymuch 4y ago
        I find it hard to imagine people being more corrupt than corporations the vast majority of the time. Especially pilots vs corporations. The insane power imbalance and the capitalist society we live in makes it highly unlikely individual middle class people are close to as corrupt as corps. Also, the companies should get some sort of insurance. Not screw over individual powerless people.
      - frumper 4y ago
        It does suck. Companies should buy an insurance plan from a company that sells insurance if they want insurance. If the company is good at keeping trainees then that'll reflect in their premiums. If they're bad, they should figure out why they're bad.
  - ryandrake 4y ago
Kon-Peki 4y ago
> If you sign up for the training, you are telling the business that you will return their investment and benefit them. Is the business offering a similar guarantee to the employee?
- randomdata 4y ago
  I don't imagine businesses are expending these capital costs with the intention of closing up shop the next day. So, yes, clearly.
  - FireBeyond 4y ago
    Hah, what? I have watched personally multiple household name companies go on hiring sprees when layoffs, that those line and department managers were aware of, were imminent. Tacoma FD for one locally high visibility action: Advertised for the hiring of 30-44 firefighters. Had a few thousand applicants. Rented the Tacoma Dome for several days for testing applicants. Went through the selection process, got their candidates, put them through nearly six months of full-time training. They all graduate from Academy... ... and come to their station the next morning to get a pink slip. They literally trained these people and let them go the moment they finished training, before they could do one day of actual work. Because there was no budget to pay them. A budget that had been signed off by the City nearly six months -before- the hiring process began.
    - randomdata 4y ago
      What, what? Intention doesn't mean things can't go wrong. A lot can go wrong as time marches forward and your expectations turn out to be incorrect. Tacoma FD no doubt intended to keep those firefighters on staff, even if it didn't work out that way in the end. A business won't necessarily realize benefit from training, but they do offer a similar guarantee to the workers that they may also not realize a benefit. If things turn out as planned, both will benefit. Benefit is not without risk. Those who can't handle the risk seek shelter elsewhere. Such is life.
csydas 4y ago
Your point is understood, but at the same time, if it's not a recognized certification that is applicable to other jobs and positions, then it's a preference of the business, not a business need. The employer decided to make this a requirement for their employees, that is their decision and they should accept the cost. More simply put, if it's not something that is readily verifiable and accepted by any other business in the same category, then I understand this as the employers' _choice_ to give their employees this business. Would we consider the same reimbursement scheme for coffee/snacks and restroom breaks? These also are on paid time which costs the employer, but I don't think (yet) employers are trying to recoup such costs. If we were talking about professional certifications, I would maybe understand some commitment agreement from the employees, but the trainings described are shop specific as per the article. I would not agree that this should require repayment, and seems the courts agree as well.
pclmulqdq 4y ago
The fundamental trade businesses make with employees is that they remove risk from the employee's life in return for removing the potential rewards that come from having a successful business. If you add back a component of risk, you are making the trade a lot less attractive.
Buttons840 4y ago
Do these small companies want employees who feign incompetence and "quiet quit"? Because paying for training is no guarantee the employee will be a profitable one, contract or not.
xivzgrev 4y ago
There could be room for that. But the article cites several examples not like that, particularly training that employees consider rudimentary or already covering what they already know. It sounds like bullshit because it is - employers are trying to get employees to stay, and some use a stick to do so.
wing-_-nuts 4y ago
>Training for a niche industry may be much more expensive because I can’t afford to have a standardized training program, and some employees have to be unproductive to teach the new employee how to be productive. I vehemently disagree with this. If your training is so niche as to not be standardized (and thus, have value in the marketplace), you absolutely should not get to go after the employee. If they leave? Tough. Work on retainment if you wish your company to be successful. With this line of reasoning, every business down to restaurants with fry cooks could argue they are imparting valuable wisdom and thus hold their employees indentured. This is not some hypothetical to me. My ancestors were indentured servants to the Jamestown colony.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  > My ancestors were indentured servants to the Jamestown colony So what? This affects your life how?
  - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
    It's impossible for me to take this question in good faith if you have any reading comprehension at all.
FireBeyond 4y ago
> If you sign up for the training IF. In many of these cases, employees show up, are told that they are "required" to undergo training that the company has now enrolled them in and that they will be required to repay.

leeroyjenkins11 4y ago

You mean when the employee voluntarily agrees to the terms of the contract? I have seen when employees take advantage of job training and then immediately bounce when their contract expires for that. They used 6months of code camp training while being paid, and as soon as they could they left. If those contracts were not allowed, there wouldn't be a company willing to pay for that. When you sign a lease you usually can't break the lease without penalty.yes, if a company makes up the training costs for in house training, making it astronomical, then that seems like it'd be up for litigation.

deadbunny 4y ago
I'm assuming* they all bounced as soon as they could because with their newly acquired skills they could go get vastly more money. I'm also assuming the employer refused to up their pay to "market rates" because, hey they invested in them, they should stick around (for below market rate) because we're all a big family and we invest in our family. * Assumption based on the exact scenario happening every fucking time
adrianN 4y ago
Employees voluntarily agreeing to contracts means very little without a lot of context. Generally speaking the power differential between companies and employees is too great for any meaningful "voluntary" action on the part of employees.
- zo1 4y ago
  Let's all not forget the most "voluntary" contract of all: the "social contract" between the lowly individual and the all-powerful state. Apparently there wasn't a power differential there, right? Purely consensual and I had full choice in not signing it.
  - SuoDuanDao 4y ago
    Okay, but the social contract defends you from the violence of everyone else starting a few months before you're actually born. Sure, it might not be a great contract even given that, and I agree it should be easier to shop around the social contract you want (or that there should be the option not to have one a la seasteading). But given how much it provides before someone is able to understand the terms of a contract like that, it makes sense for it to be opt-in.

refurb 4y ago

It's a contract. Don't sign it if you don't like the terms.

nucleogenesis 4y ago
Of course - if you want to eat and have a house and make money and your options are limited due to the lack of any societal norm that people should be cared for and you weren’t privileged to have opportunities to or the the ability to develop skills that are worth money — then you should just be homeless instead of signing yourself into 10s of thousands of dollars of debt to a corporation. Or you should be grateful for the opportunity to be contractually enslaved?
- refurb 4y ago
  Are you saying semi-skilled jobs are hard to come by? That the woman in the article that was a hairdresser couldn't possibly find another hairdressing job? The other example from the article was nursing. Nursing is in huge demand. That woman most certainly had other options. I worked in Europe. My contract said my company had to give me 3 months notice before quitting. And I had to give 3 months notice before quitting. If I didn't, I had to pay the company the equivalent of 1 months salary for each month of notice I didn't give. So if I just up and quit, I'd have to pay 3 months salary. Was I a "indentured servant" too?
  - Buttons840 4y ago
    > Nursing is in huge demand. That woman most certainly had other options. Part of the problem is the people creating the contracts are perfectly willing to place the burden on existing nurses and allow patients to suffer. Even when already short staffed, hospitals are not under much pressure to renegotiate a contract.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    > And I had to give 3 months notice before quitting. That's pretty crazy. So if you apply to a new job you have to tell them: "I can start 3 months from now, no sooner"? Edit: This kind of clause seems so counter-productive to the employer. If I was forced to give 3 months notice, I'd be checked out for 2/3+ of that time. What are they going to do? Fire me?