It’s a TRAP

In Idiots & Robots, Kristin Hooker raises and answers several very important questions, including:

• Are there demons?
• Can demons possess robots?
• If a company developed robots that were capable of replacing most of the workforce, would the executives of said company stop there, or would make it worse?

You’ll have to read the book for details, but suffice it to say that the answer to four of those five questions is “Absolutely.”

But employers aren’t waiting until the year 2028 to fuck over employees, because they have plenty of lower-tech ways to do so. Recall if you will that time a sub-par sandwich chain required its food service workers to sign two-year non-compete agreements that prevented them from working at any other place that serves sandwiches, subs, pitas or wraps.

But there are more ways to make people stay at jobs they don’t like without improving the conditions that cause employees to leave. For example, there are Training Repayment Agreement Provisions (TRAPs). They may make sense for things like paying for an employee to learn to fly an airplane or perform a new surgical technique, but not so much for things like dog grooming. Especially if the employer doesn’t mention the training or the cost and the need to repay until the employee gives notice. Essentially, training repayment without the employee’s agreement, because contracts aren’t for little people.

Bosses in industries such as retail, health care and logistics are reverting to an old tactic and trapping people in miserable jobs by threatening to saddle them with debt if they quit. 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 vow to charge them for training costs if they quit before an arbitrary deadline.
[…]
Two workers who are being threatened with thousands of dollars in bills through the enforcement of TRAPs appeared before the banking committee on September 7. BreAnn Scally, the lead plaintiff in the class action against PetSmart, told lawmakers about how she was left owing $5,500 to the company for a dog “Grooming Academy” that was initially advertised as free. Registered nurse Cassie Pennings testified about being stuck with $7,500, “more than six months’ rent,” after leaving one hospital job because she was appalled by staffing ratios during the COVID-19 pandemic and didn’t want to be complicit in neglecting patients.

Another thing bad employers like to do – and this may well have inspired Hooker’s vision of the future – is the time-disgraced practice of not paying employees enough money to live and then offering them loans.

Payday advances were another type of employer-driven debt examined by the Senate Banking Committee. Seligman highlighted the case of Marriott workers in Philadelphia who became dependent on short-term loans from the company credit union because “scheduling practices made it difficult for them to earn consistent income without getting a second job.” Franchising agreements that misclassify workers as independent contractors can also leave low-wage earners heavily in debt to bosses because of franchising fees, he told the committee.

Antics like this are the not-so-fine-print to right wing claims that the U.S. doesn’t need employee protections, because employees can just leave jobs they don’t like. Without employee protections the employer can do whatever they want to keep the employee from leaving. Only sadistic freaks like Republicans would think that requiring an employee to fork over more money than they make in a quarter – or chew off a leg – in order to leave a job is freedom because the only freedom they care about is the freedom of more powerful people to harm less powerful people.

To be clear, the only point to this sort of bullshit is to make sure employees who are unhappy stay unhappy. Nowhere in the Big Book of Good Business Practices is there a chapter on forcing people to stay with a jobs they don’t like. That is the opposite of a good business practice (I said “good,” not “standard”). The more unhappy, unsatisfied and anxious a person, the less well they are able to do anything.

And then there’s the issue of people being angry enough to deliberately fuck shit up.

Forcing people to stay does the opposite of increase productivity, boost the bottom line, improve quarterly outlook or whatever the latest phrases denizens of the CSuite like to utter these days. And sites like Glassdoor make it harder to lure in the unwary with claims of great employee retention. But for giving some moneyed jackass a boner because they regret being born too late to own slaves, making it very difficult for people to leave a job is better than a fatal dose of sildenafil.

People who post off-topic comments think Andy Puzder would have been the greatest Secretary of Labor ever, if it wasn’t for those meddling Dems.