You accept a job, and your new employer informs you that you will be required to go through training before you begin work. Perhaps that training is to obtain a particular licence, like a commercial driver’s license or a certification that you’ve completed 10,000 hours of eyebrow threading training, or perhaps the training is more a matter of learning how your employer wants you to perform a function, for which you were already licensed or qualified, but their way.

To get the job, you agree to the training, but at some point down the road, you decide that you no longer want the job. Maybe you don’t want to work for the employer, now that you’ve come to know more about the company or people. Maybe you got a better offer along the way and decide that the job wasn’t as great as you thought. Whatever the reason, you decide to quit. That’s your right, of course. Or is it?

When a Washington state beauty salon charged Simran Bal $1,900 for training after she quit, she was shocked.

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.

Bal’s story mirrors that of dozens of people and advocates in healthcare, trucking, retail and other industries who complained recently to U.S. regulators that some companies charge employees who quit large sums of money for training.

Upon signing up for the job, putative employees sign a Training Repayment Agreement Provision (TRAP) which provides that if an employee resigns before completing a certain period of employment, they must reimburse employers for the cost of their training.

Nearly 10% of American workers surveyed in 2020 were covered by a training repayment agreement, said the Cornell Survey Research Institute.

The practice, which critics call Training Repayment Agreement Provisions, or TRAPs, is drawing scrutiny from U.S. regulators and lawmakers.

The argument from employers is that there is a significant cost in training new employees for the job, and they are willing to expend it provided the new people don’t cut and run, leaving them holding the bag on training costs and with no new trained employee to show for it. On the one hand, new employees sign off on TRAPS when they take the job, often as part of their ordinary employment agreement. It’s rarely a big deal, since they’ve just taken a job and aren’t looking to argue with, and perhaps piss off, their new employer before they even start. And if they anticipated quitting before starting, chances are they wouldn’t take the job at all.

Some employees argue that the training, though mandated by the employer, is more a formalistic requirement than anything useful.

Bal said she was happy when she was hired by the Oh Sweet salon near Seattle in August 2021.

But 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.

But, she said, the salon owner was slow to schedule the trainings, which would sometimes be postponed or cancelled. 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.

When she quit in October 2021, Bal received a bill for $1,900 for the instruction she did receive. “She was charging me for training for services that I was already licensed in,” said Bal.

Another distinction is between training that enables a trainee to get a licence that holds independent value, which she can use on future jobs, as opposed to employer-mandated but useless training of little or no value to the employee otherwise.

While an employer cannot stop a person from quitting since slavery and indentured servitude was outlawed, they can exercise their rights under the TRAP to demand, and sue for, reimbursement for what they claim to be the cost of training. That puts the employee in a difficult, if not untenable, position of walking away from a job and being saddled with not insignificant debt, often for training of no value to them.

Are TRAPS creating new debt slaves, employees unable to leave a job because they can’t escape the costs assessed by employers for training of little or no value to the employee? If the problem is that the employer’s working conditions are onerous, must the employee choose between debt and a miserable job?

While employees may sign these TRAP agreements, forming a contract, is it a contract of adhesion, a contract not entered into knowingly since they have no idea what the training will be worth or what working conditions might be? Should TRAPS be allowed or should they be held unenforceable as making employees tantamount to debt slaves?

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