Employers Demand Payment When Employees Leave

welcome once again to Leto's law here's Steve lato I did the story a while back about the workers at the hospital who wanted to go work at another hospital in hospital one sued the workers to keep them from leaving even though it's happening in the state where employment is at will and uh of course the court later on said no these people can leave they want to but at first the court dithered and said it would think about it hoping the parties come to resolution but many people pointed out and said well you know if you're a worker you should be able to leave and go work anywhere you want as long as you're not breaking a contract or something well Paul sent me not to Steve have you seen this new story here about the recent alarming Trend more U.S companies charging employees for job training if they quit Diane Bartz wrote this for Reuters and basically they're saying yeah you can leave you got to pay us to leave now there's a theoretical possibility here that this could make sense in some situations but we'll get there when a Washington state beauty salon charged a woman one thousand nine hundred dollars for training after she quit she was shocked Not only was she already a licensed esthetician with no need for instruction she said that the trainings were specific to the shop and low quality but her story mirrors that of dozens of people and advocates in healthcare Trucking retail and other Industries who complained recently to U.S Regulators some companies charge employees who quit large sums of money and they call that for training purposes nearly 10 percent of American workers surveyed in 2020 were covered by a training repayment agreement said the Cornell survey Research Institute the practice which critics call training repayment agreement Provisions or traps is drawing scrutiny from U.S regulators and lawmakers on Capitol Hill a senator is studying legislative options with an eye toward introducing a bill next year to reign in the practice um at the state level Attorneys General like Minnesota's Keith Ellison are assessing how prevalent the practice is and they might update their guidance on it if they think it's a serious problem Ellison told Reuters he would be inclined to oppose reimbursement demands for job-specific instruction while it could be different if an employer wanted reimbursement for training for a certification like a commercial driving license that is widely recognized as valuable the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has begun reviewing the practice while the justice department and the Federal Trade Commission have received complaints about it use of training agreements is growing even though unemployment is low which presumably gives workers more power said Jonathan Harris who teaches at the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles employers are looking for ways to keep their workers from quitting without raising wages or improving work and conditions said Harris the cfpb which announced in June it was looking into the agreements has begun to focus on how they may prevent even skilled employees with years of schooling like nurses from finding new better jobs and according to cfpb officials that's what's going on but they could not give their name because they're not authorized to speak on the record we've heard from workers and worker organizations that the products may be restricting worker mobility and the products here is the traps trap's been around in a small way since the late 1980s primarily in high wage positions where workers receive valuable training but in recent years the agreements have become more widespread according to Harris who's the professor Loyola one critic of the cfpb effort was the national Federation of Independent Business or the nfib who said the issue is outside the agency's authority because it was unrelated to Consumer Financial products and services some state governments have authority to regulate employer driven debt cfpb should defer to those governments which are closer to the people of the states than the cfpb it said now the woman we mentioned at the beginning said she was happy when she was hired by a salon near Seattle in August 21 but she soon found that before she could provide services for clients and earn money she was required to attend trainings on such things as sugaring to remove unwanted hair and lash and brow maintenance but she said the salon owner was slow to schedule the trainings which would sometimes be postponed or canceled you're also not informative she described them as introductory level while waiting to complete the training she worked at the front desk which paid less when she quit in October 21 she received a bill for nineteen hundred dollars for the instructions she received she is charging me for training for services that has already licensed in is what she said meanwhile the woman who runs that Salon filed a lawsuit small claims court recover the money court records provided by the woman being sued so the case was dismissed in September by a judge who ruled that the woman being sued did not complete the promise training and owed nothing meanwhile the woman who owns the place declined requests for comment in comments the cfpb the national nurses United said they did a survey that found that the Agreements are increasingly ubiquitous in the health care sector with new nurses often affected the survey found at 589 of the 1698 nurses surveyed were required to take training programs and 326 of them were required to pay the employers if they left before a certain time that is repay them the money that was supposedly spent on the training many nurses said they were not told about the training repayment requirement before beginning work and that classroom instruction often repeated what they had already learned in school and obviously the first thing that should occur to somebody here is that if somebody's about to get hired they should be told that this is coming in other words you can't hire somebody have them working there and say oh by the way you've got to take this training here you're going to continue working and if you leave we're going to sue you to get the money back unless you pay it back to us um the International Brotherhood of teamsters said in comments that training repayment demands were particularly egregious in commercial Trucking they said that some companies that are out there will train people for a commercial driver's license but charge them more than six thousand dollars if they leave if they leave that company that is before a certain time neither company mentioned here by name responded to a request for comment the American Trucking associations argue that the license is portable from one employer to another and required by the government urged the cfpb to not characterize it as Employer driven debt meanwhile a sociologist the University of Pennsylvania spent six months training and then driving a truck said the issue deserves scrutiny anytime we have training contracts for low skilled workers we should be asking why if you have a good job you don't need a training contract people are going to want to stay and you know I can understand some of this it depends on the setting it depends on what you were told but let's suppose like you just woke up one dance and I want to become an airline pilot and I'm purposely describing something that I don't think is possible but I'm using the example because I want to exaggerate for effect you woke up one morning and decided I want to become an airline pilot contact one of the big Airlines the type of people you see on orbits and and you know Travelocity and they say oh do you have a pilot license because no I don't they go well to fly one of our big planes that's got engines on it many engines you need to have a whole bunch of ratings you have a whole bunch of certifications whole bunch of licenses you need to get a pilot license but a pilot license often starts with a single engine prop that you fly privately that's not for a commercial purpose and then you work your way up this ladder of all these certifications and you wind up with a commercial multi-engine jet rating okay so can you go get all that stuff you go no I can't but I'm really really good I I I work real hard I show up for work you're gonna be glad you hired me if you hire me to be a pilot the guy goes you know something I like this kid's gumption he's a go-getter let's send him to Pilot School so you get sent off to playlist school and then put you through all the training to get to the point where you're walking through the airport wearing a nice uniform and you're flying their planes and you show up on day one and you sit down in the cockpit and the guy sits down next to you who are you he goes I'm your co-pilot you go I didn't I didn't I didn't want to have a co-pilot I I thought I'd get to gonna get the Flies planes by myself can I really I gotta share so at the end of this flight I call it my boss and I go hey dude I you know something it ain't for me I'm out of here sorry now you'd understand that if they sunk all this time and effort and money into training me that it might make sense that I'll stick around for a little while after I've gotten that training that that might make sense but it's also training that would have cost me a fortune to get on my own and so if you are going to give me that training on the understanding that I'm going to bring that training to you as an employee I think that does make sense but of course the situation I described is somebody with zero skills in that industry being trained to have all the skills necessary to work in that industry okay so that to me would make sense but on the other hand when somebody already knows how to do something they show up at work they've been hired and they're told oh by the way we've got training as to how we do things here you've got to take this training you take the training and you're like hey you know something this is more about how the business operates than it is about my profession which is what the woman's saying here about the beauty salon and they say oh and by the way you have to take the training and if you quit within a certain period of time you got to pay this back and by the way I'm curious to know what the period of time is because it could save you quit within 10 years you got to pass back would that be fair five years three years one year what's what's the length of time on that but the biggest problem I have is is when is this disclosed and I can see a situation where I show up at a beauty salon I'm I'm gonna do hair and they say Steve we'd love to hire you we understand you're fully licensed in our state however we do things a little differently here so before you get hired in full time as a hair person a hair cutest uh we're going to make you take some classes on how this all works and I say oh okay do I get paid while I'm going to class that's a fair question to ask and will I get paid the same rate I'll get paid afterwards once I've finished it or is it a reduced pay like this woman said that's question number one question number two is and if I leave I got to pay that money back how much money is it and at what point do I become free to leave without having to pay it back and so I've mentioned before that my specialty is consumer law primarily lemon law defective automobiles ensuing manufacturers of same quite often however in the field of consumer law the primary thing we talk about more than anything else is simply disclosure that is letting the consumer know something and that's where the problems often fall now I understand these people here are not consumers this is an employer employee relationship not a consumer Merchant relationship but I think the same thinking is parallel here so if you showed up at a job and they said we are going to hire you we're going to pay you but before we pay you this we're going to pay you this while you take training and if you quit within one year of the end of the training you got to pay us back because we wasted this money training you and this by the way gives you the opportunity to say oh I'm sorry I want no part of that because you should always have the right to say no to something like that while you still got a chance to get out of there without wasting any of your own money so there's a whole bunch of issues there with respect to the disclosures and informing the prospective employee and it's also interesting that the woman of sued the small claims court she defended and she won so that's good news too and it makes me wonder now going forward if the woman who owns a salon will continue doing this or will she change anything so I can imagine uh if she were to consult an attorney and say what should I do here the attorney is going to say well you should draw up a little contract that says in exchange for hiring me and promising me employment at the end of this training period I understand that I am going to be getting this training that has value but I'm not paying for it so long as I stay employed here for one year after the end of the training or some time period like that and then you show that to them explain it to them and have them sign it and that gives them the opportunity to say you know something no I'll go down the street I can find someplace else to work so there you go but interesting thing we're getting at here is this appears becoming more widespread and spreading into different fields and that's the thing so more U.S companies charging employees for job training when they quit Diane burtz wrote that for Reuters Paul sent it thanks a lot questions or comments put them below let's talk to you later bye-bye thank you for watching Leto's law think about it Hermits have no peer pressure

Channel: Steve Lehto

Views: 308,074

Keywords: lemon law, michigan lemon law, lemon law attorney, lemon law lawyer, http://www.lehtoslaw.com, steve lehto

Id: L7528wnMv9k

Length: 14min 25sec (865 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 18 2022