Yes, you can see the clause they have people sign here
Yep. My company has the same deal for pretty much any certification you can imagine, but it's one year and it's not required at all when you become employed. Basically, it's the company's way of saying "we'll pay for your certification, but not if you're just going to leave the moment you pass".
It's not in California, but is likely legal in most states. Even in California, they have employees sign Binding Arbitration agreements that prevent them from seeking justice in a court of law. Employees tried filing arbitration requests in bulk to force the company to pay for lots of arbitration cases to avoid court, so some companies, like Microsoft are including clauses that prevent this tactic
What's worse about retail employees being forced into these agreements is the company has far more incentive to fire them for cause when they're 18 months into the agreement.
Yeah this is actually where I started to see it happening the most years ago; tech in general was rife for this kind of exploitation. My father was an IT director for decades and he talked about these sorts of policies creeping in. They also started becoming contingent to promotions for managers in sales and other marketing or business type areas under the guise of "leadership training", and then it started to bleed over into a ton of other fields that you wouldn't have necessarily expected them to be a part of for pure exploitation like this article points out.
That's truly vile. Honestly should be illegal, it's straight up abuse of power.
And that's what these clauses were originally for, professional sectors that had legitimate, specialized training costs that the employee will benefit from even if they leave that employer.
I was going to say this. There's plenty of cases I've come across in professional settings where the employer stumps up for a lot of specialised and necessary training for the employee to just disappear which is very frustrating. But the examples here aren't defensible.
And those are actual skills they're paying to train you on. Retail employees aren't getting any certification, niche skills, or real education. The clause in a professional environment is there to protect the employer's actual expenses on training for a specialized role, the clause in a retail environment is there to prevent the worker from leaving for another generic retail opportunity.
Yea, this is especially common in the trucking industry.
Something like that makes sense though because they are literally training you for your a one license, This company doing it isn't defensible.
They provided you with training for a specialized role and helped you (presumably) qualify and pass licensing for that role. That's what it's intended for
It's not fear, It's a way to hold their employees and force them to not seek better employment. This would be normal training and onboarding in the past and even in other companies but many are now putting this clause in because they have terrible turn over.
It's significantly different when retail is charging people for non-transferable training. I signed an agreement that said I would stay at my job for three years if they paid for my master's degree. It was a no brainer, because I wanted the degree anyway and worst case scenario I'd end up paying for something I would have already needed to pay for with my career.
I won't speak for anyone else but with my saying that it's nothing new at all, I'm referring to is the fact that this has been slowly creeping into all realms of employment for a long time, and has become exploitative to force people to stay employed at a certain location regardless of whether or not you have a certificate to show for it. If you have to move away for a family emergency, you're fucked, you owe the company what you owe them for the education or training. That may have made sense in the past if they're paying to finish a major degree for you, but it's more and more becoming attached to tangential trainings as well that you may need to ascend in an organization or for promotion even in white collar roles.
Exactly this. This is a training fee for a job that you could be fired from a day before your 2yr anniversary, and the job would not have paid you enough in those 729 days to save up for the training fee. These are basic retail jobs with no specialized knowledge holding a ransom over their employees' heads, and their only avenue for redress is private, binding arbitration with a judge getting paid by the company they are trying to fight against.
This. I'm baffled people keep saying "oh this is nothing new! I have this"
