An increasing number of U.S. companies are charging employees who quit for the job training they were provided, dozens of former employees are claiming to regulators.
Numerous employees from the healthcare, trucking, retail, and other industries say their former companies are charging them “exorbitant” sums of money for job training after they quit, according to Reuters. One in 10 U.S. employees is covered by what critics term training repayment agreement provisions, or TRAPs, which require quitting employees to repay the company for job training, a study from the Cornell Survey Research Institute found.
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“Employers are looking for ways to keep their workers from quitting without raising wages or improving working conditions,” Jonathan Harris, a teacher at Loyola Law School, told the outlet.
Harris and other experts believe the practice is intended to reduce worker mobility. Though the practice has existed in some capacity since the 1980s, it was previously only found in highly paid jobs that required extensive training to perform. The practice has since expanded to lower-skilled fields like trucking and retail.
Charging former employees for job training has become especially prevalent in the healthcare sector, with a survey from National Nurses United finding that nearly 1 in 5 nurses, out of a survey pool of 1,698, were required to pay back their employers for training if they quit.
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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau began an investigation into the practice back in June but hasn’t recommended any legal response.
