Indentured servitude is alive and well here in the United States, with employers
finding new and improved ways to burden their own employees with debt.
Yeah, imagine that, your employer not paying you a living wage, but
instead turning around and saddling you with debt over your training.
Now, what's going on here?
Well, workers across the United States in fields ranging from nursing to trucking,
have been discouraged from leaving jobs they hate or can't afford to keep.
Because employers vowed to charge them for
training costs if they quit before an arbitrary deadline.
So believe it or not, these agreements,
these are contractual agreements between employers and employees.
They're known as literal, like they're named TRAPs, TRAPs.
It stands for training, repayment agreement, provisions, TRAPs.
And it is, it's a trap.
>> Yeah. >> Something that we should have
legislation in place to prevent from happening,
we don't have that legislation in place.
There have been some hearings on this matter, but
I wanna just give you a few quick examples, Cenk.
And then I wanna hear what you think.
So, BreAnn Scally is one individual who has dealt with this.
She's the lead plaintiff in the class action against PetSmart.
She told lawmakers about how she was left owing $5,500 to the company for
a dog grooming academy, that was initially advertised as free.
Scally recalled how one manager told her she could work her way out of debt
simply by upselling or
convincing customers to buy more pet grooming products and services.
She actually complied, saying that she upsold $6,000 worth of products, but
she was still charged the full amount for the debt, months after she left her job.
So the idea is, if you quit your job before the contractual agreement entails,
like let's say the contractual agreement says you have to work there for
at least a year.
Let's say you leave six months after starting, well then they can saddle
you with the training costs that were incurred in order to hire you.
And I wanna be clear that we're not talking about credentials,
we're not talking about going to college and getting some sort of degree, and
the employer paid for.
No, no, we're talking about literal just on the job training that any
company literally needs to do, in order to have employees know
what to do when they're working at that place of business.
That's what you're, that's the cost burden you're supposed to shoulder as a company.
But they're finding ways to put that burden on employees.
>> Yeah, so look, there are some situations where the company pays
out something and really I think it makes sense for them to get paid back.
So for example, high end white collar workers a lot of times, or
sometimes will get master's degrees and their company will pay for it.
And then they don't, sometimes they'll say,,
they're gonna take it out of your paycheck a lot of times they say,
no, we're gonna pay for it, but you have to be here three years or two years.
And once, but if you're not, then you gotta pay us back.
I think it makes sense in that circumstance.
They're helping you to get a new opportunity that you could
use by the way elsewhere too, right?
And sometimes for some skill positions, I can see it, but
it's not quite the employer, like the hairdresser academies, right?
Okay, you get trained to be a hairdresser, but then they don't turn around and
use you as a hairdresser and keep that debt on you.
You just have to pay them, right?
So it's not an impossible situation.
But what they're doing now is, no, they got, they'll bring it all the way down to
like, hey, we taught you how to flip burgers, you owe us $6000.
>> Yeah, I know, but like that's literal, okay,
this is now being applied to all sorts of jobs.
We're talking about PetSmart.
>> Yeah. >> No,
no offense to anyone working at PetSmart,
I'm not trying to look down on them at all.
I'm just trying to make a point about how this is not a specialized job,
where you need special credentials that cost a ton of money to get, right?
We're just, look,
here's what's happening with corporations in the country right now, okay?
They're either not paying employees while they're training,
which my husband dealt with quite a bit in the middle of the pandemic, right?
Looking for new jobs, finally took a few jobs and
they don't pay during the training process, which is insane.
Cuz you're there for eight hours a day, but you're not getting paid for it,
I thought that was egregious enough.
Now they're finding ways to ensure that the employees shoulder the burden,
the financial burden of training, which again,
that is a cost that the employer should take on.
Why should the employee have to take that on,
even if they decide they wanna quit after six months?
How about you make the conditions in the workplace better, so
people don't want to quit?
How about that?
But they don't wanna do that.
And then the other thing that's driving me crazy, is the endless free labor,
endless free labor that they expect from the customers.
You go to the grocery store, what do you think self checkout is?
They wanna get rid of paid labor, and they want you to do the labor for free.
That's what that is, it's disgusting.
That is what the system has devolved to,
because this is how the system is supposed to work.
>> So, this again leads to difference between big business and small business.
So, could small businesses do this too if they have unscrupulous owners?
Yeah, of course they could, right?
But they have the option of not doing it.
So like for example, we have technical directors here, and
then have to be trained on a particular piece of equipment that we have.
If somebody suggested here, hey, why don't we make them pay us for learning how
to use that equipment, and then doing their job, we would say that's absurd.
We're not gonna do that, if we're asked, no,
we have to pay them while they're learning that's part of their job, right?
But at a big business, what happens is the minute someone suggests an idea,
it doesn't matter how absurd it is, that makes money for the company.
The burden of proof shifts to not, to doing it.
And so if you're opposed to it,
you have to prove why the company shouldn't make that extra money.
And that's really hard to do, okay?
So, the decent people of the company are at a massive disadvantage.
So like you've seen it in other stories, we've covered like the airlines,
they came up with the misery index, right?
If we make our customers more miserable,
then we could charge them to make them less miserable.
Well, once somebody comes up with that idea,
somebody has to prove in a spreadsheet that no,
that will cost us more money in the long run, if our customers are miserable.
And that's super hard to do cuz it's vague, how do you judge their misery?
Whereas the other guy goes, hey, we charge them 35 bucks for putting their,
bringing their carry on now, that's money, that's money, right?
And in this case they're like,
why don't we just charge our own workers to work here?
>> It's insane.
>> And then, that is hard, well, maybe they won't work here, if they work here,
that's fine.
But they'll be miserable, who cares?
How do you quantify that?
So then if you're a big public company, you're screwed, you have to do it.
And if you don't do it, then maybe they'll fire the CEO and
go get a more brutal one, that'll charge the workers for doing the job.
And that's how we wind up right here, guys, the way to prevent it though,
is government is supposed to look out for you.
Corporations look out for themselves, government looks out for you the citizens,
except our government doesn't do that at all.
They're bought by the corporations.
So that's why we have this out of control, late stage capitalism that we have.
>> Well, the one good piece of news is, we're seeing workers organize and
expect better working conditions.
And that's another way that I'm seeing, a better future.
So, that's why we cover those labor stories.
It's important to know if workers don't have any power in the workplace, yea,
they'll get shafted by their employers.
And we've been seeing it happen over and over again.
>> Look, I say one last thing cuz it's in the news today, the Federal Reserve is
thinking of cranking up the rates again to fight inflation.
But one of the things that they're doing is they're trying to create more
unemployment, to cool off the economy.
Well that, because one of the things that they're really worried about, is that
the workers are now have leverage, and they do not want them to have leverage.
So that they could force contracts like this on them, and
then you can never leave, because how are you going to find $6,000 on that
kind of a salary to pay back PetSmart?
And we're just picking on them because it's in the news, but
a lot of companies are doing this.
>> No, I mean there are hospitals doing it, nurses are dealing with this as well,
which is, I mean, nurses are already going to school to get the credentials that
they need to do their jobs.
What do you mean you're training them?
It's just complete nonsense, just again a way of punishing workers and honestly
keeping them locked in at jobs that don't treat them well, that's the issue, right?
>> Yeah, actually one more thing, Republicans do this all the time and
the mainstream media helps them.
And so big government, we don't want big government, and
then you see them say, you can't regulate your own body.
Wait, so why do they say that point that they don't even mean?
Because they then turn around and say,
will you not want the government regulating big business?
The real problem is big government.
Now the real problem is big business that bought big government, okay?
And then uses it for its own purposes.
So, I don't want you guys to fall prey to corporate media propaganda, and
right wing propaganda, where they make it all regulation is bad.
No, it depends, sometimes you can overregulate, but a lot of times
the point of regulation is that, it's a law to help you, to protect you.
And the government is the cops in the in the context of business saying to
the employer, you are not allowed to do that.
And corporate media hates that, and Republicans hate that.
So they fight tooth and nail to allow corporations to do this to you.