Training repayment agreement provisions (TRAPs),are a new form of “stay-or-pay” contract that indebts employees to their bosses. Often inserted into contracts without workers’ knowledge, these restrictive labor covenants turn employer-sponsored job training and education programs into conditional loans that must be paid back — sometimes at a premium — if employees leave before a set date.
Employers argue that these clauses are a way to recoup their investment in employees who decide to leave the company prematurely. But these contracts have come under fire from labor groups and regulators. Oftentimes, the amount of debt demanded under TRAP contracts — which can be upward of $50,000 — is far higher than the employer’s training costs.
SLAVERY, WITH EXTRA STEPS.
I used to live in Tucson Arizona which for a time was like the call center capital of the US. there were SO MANY call centers there that they would hire literally anyone with a pulse. if you quit one you could quite literally go back a few months later and get your job back because the turn over was just so massive. And they all had paid like 2 week training.
So you can see where this is going and how exploitable it was. This was the early 00’s and me and a friend of mine being broke 20 year olds decided to do just that. We wanted to get paid to literally just sit there, not answer phones, nothing. just get paid for doing nothing. So we’d both go to one call center, get hired, do the 2 week training, get paid, quit, go to the next call center, repeat. Eventually once you made the first round of all the call centers you could literally just start the chain over again because by that point enough time had passed that the first call center would hire you again. We did this for like a solid year. Just get paid to sit there and listen to a dude talk.
The only reason we stopped doing it was because it was SO boring.
Hah, at that point you could’ve gotten hired on as a trainer, a better pay, and never had to answer a phone.