The International Brotherhood of Teamsters said in comments that training repayment demands were “particularly egregious” in commercial trucking. Many nurses said they were not told about the training repayment requirement before beginning work, and that classroom instruction often repeated what they learned in school. The survey found that 589 of the 1,698 nurses surveyed were required to take training programs and 326 of them were required to pay employers if they left before a certain time. In comments to the CFPB, 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. Court records provided by Bal show the case was dismissed in September by a judge who ruled that Bal did not complete the promised training and owed nothing. Karina Villalta, who runs Oh Sweet LLC, filed a lawsuit in small claims court to recover the money. “She was charging me for training for services that I was already licensed in,” said Bal. When she quit in October 2021, Bal received a bill for $1,900 for the instruction she did receive. They were also not informative Bal described them as “introductory level.” While waiting to complete the training, Bal worked at the front desk, which paid less. CFPB should defer to those governments, which are closer to the people of the states than the CFPB,” it added.īal said she was happy when she was hired by the Oh Sweet salon near Seattle in August 2021.īut she soon found that before she could provide services for clients, and earn more, she was required to attend trainings on such things as sugaring to remove unwanted hair and lash and brow maintenance.īut, she said, the salon owner was slow to schedule the trainings, which would sometimes be postponed or cancelled. “(Some state governments) have authority to regulate employer-driven debt. One critic of the CFPB effort was the National Federation of Independent Business, or NFIB, which said the issue was outside the agency's authority because it was unrelated to consumer financial products and services. But in recent years the agreements have become more widespread, said Loyola's Harris. TRAPs have been around in a small way since the late 1980s primarily in high-wage positions where workers received valuable training. “We have heard from workers and worker organizations that the products may be restricting worker mobility,” the official said. 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, according to a CFPB official who was not authorized to speak on the record. Wall Street hits fresh one-month lows on rate hike worries US stocks fall again amid fears that the country’s central bank would further raise interest rates. “Employers are looking for ways to keep their workers from quitting without raising wages or improving working conditions,” said Harris. The 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 Los Angeles. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has begun reviewing the practice, while the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission have received complaints about it.
TRAINING ON THE JOB UPDATE
On Capitol Hill, Senator Sherrod Brown is studying legislative options with an eye toward introducing a bill next year to rein in the practice, a Senate Democratic aide said.Īt the state level, attorneys general like Minnesota's Keith Ellison are assessing how prevalent the practice is and could update guidance.Įllison 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 practice, which critics call Training Repayment Agreement Provisions, or TRAPs, is drawing scrutiny from US regulators and lawmakers.
Nearly 10% of American workers surveyed in 2020 were covered by a training repayment agreement, said the Cornell Survey Research Institute. Not only was Bal a licensed esthetician with no need for instruction, she argued that the trainings were specific to the shop and low quality.īal's story mirrors that of dozens of people and advocates in healthcare, trucking, retail and other industries who complained recently to US regulators that some companies charge employees who quit large sums of money for training. When a Washington state beauty salon charged Simran Bal $1,900 for training after she quit, she was shocked.
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