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.

Frankly, then be a better employer. Pay more, foster a better culture, provide better working circumstances. Plenty of people stay at economically shitty places because of a sense of duty, a love for their co workers, a 4 day work week or excellent benefits, etc. Welcome to a competitive market.

Otherwise you'll end up with people who only barely work to not get fined, training new people (and you have to get new people because people leave asap, fine or not, some people might even pay the fine to leave) who are immediately entering a workplace culture where no one wants to be there. Smart enough people to google the company beforehand and see the shitshow in glassdoor reviews et al. will avoid the company, potentially even years after whatever management gets its head out of its ass and rights the ship. A total disaster.

I've seen this as an excuse avoid training people, which seems absurd. It reminds me of the apocryphal discussion between two managers:

Manager 1: "But what if we train them and the leave!?"

Manager 2: "But what if we don't train them and they stay!?"

Training your people is just part of what a good manager does.

I would ask what you're doing as an employer that creates an environment where the people you're paying literally can't wait to get away from you.

* Assumption based on the exact scenario happening every fucking time

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.

Additionally, certain education-related loans do in fact disappear! Loan forgiveness is a real thing.

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.

2. People aren’t perfect. Does everyone know what they’re getting into? Do they know beforehand what kind of salary they’ll get from the company before training? Do they also know how competitive that salary is? Or how good the company is? Maybe it’s the most toxic company ever but is able to hide its negative footprints online.

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

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?

Also, the companies should get some sort of insurance. Not screw over individual powerless people.

It's also not cool to hire people when you know layoffs are coming, but employers do this all the time. But, as you say "just be a better company" is fantasy world belief.

My ex- had this, applied for a job. "We want someone who is going to be here for the long haul, five years plus." She had aspirations for vet school in the next year or two.

To you, that's a commitment from an employee that is fair to expect.

"Is the company committed to giving me a job for the next five years?" ... well, why not?

You're very much in the mindset of "an employee should be happy to have a job".

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.

If you add back a component of risk, you are making the trade a lot less attractive.

Is the business offering a similar guarantee to the employee?

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.

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.

It sounds like bullshit because it is - employers are trying to get employees to stay, and some use a stick to do so.

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.

So what? This affects your life how?

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.

Or you should be grateful for the opportunity to be contractually enslaved?

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?

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?

So yeah, when you get a new job you either tell your new employer to wait or you get them to pay off your current contract.

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.

Legally speaking it is as you say, but I was asking from a moral perspective.

But repaying training fees aren't one of them unless they don't make sense.

If you're a cashier and after 2 hours know how to do your job, your employer can't write a contract that says "Training costs $500,000 and you must repay if you quit before 5 years".

Contracts law is well developed and you can't sign a contract where you don't receive consideration. And I assume if such consideration is small, but the obligation is huge, the courts won't enforce it.