Corporate America's New Ploy to Trap Workers
levernews.com
levernews.com
It makes sense that an employer wouldn’t want to invest in significant training just to have the employee turn around and leverage it into a new job, but that could be clearly stated and agreed to up front, with the employee knowing what the agreed upon term is before they are free and clear. I’ve received retention bonuses in the past, which worked like this. They gave me a bonus, and if I left within 3 years, I had to pay it back. I had the option to not take it. The rub on that was that I think I would have had to pay back the gross value, not the net of what I received after tax. It never came to that though, I stayed the 3 years. I had to sign a similar contract when getting a relocation package.
The company in question asked us new hires on the first day to "apply again" through this "matching platform". The person beside me happily agreed to everything and started. I said I need to go through everything and went home.
It was only after a couple of hours and several red flags that I found the trap: the terms of service for the "matching platform" mentioned abuse and described the exact thing the company did in detail as an example: recruiting and selecting off platform then offering a contract through the platform to use their 'temp agency' contract. It also said that candidates that failed to report this abuse would be liable to pay a fine of several thousand plus possible damages. In retrospect I can see some of the things they did onboarding the person beside me while I was spooked and reading everything that could later be pointed as cause for damages.
I was also shocked to share this with people close to me and get a lot of glazed over eyes and people not understanding it and focusing on the "weirdness" of wanting to read everything because apparently it's just normal to sign documents without reading them.
I can see now why this sort of thing happens. People really do just sign documents and go along with things without asking very basic questions. Luckily I have worked as an independent contractor long enough to never accept terms I do not thoroughly understand.
And this is why it's so common.
It seems the only options are (1) just swallow the whole bottle of crazy pills and accept that your insane for caring about contracts, or (2) throw your morals in the trash and exploit the stupid people who don't read contracts.
I've seen this myself in multiple places I've worked. I mention parts of the employment contract that bother me and co-workers look at me weird and say "mine didn't have that". Bro, I guarantee your contract said the same thing, but you didn't read it.
And sometimes I can't really blame people. It's really stressful and aggravating to read an employment contract; a great way to start a existential crisis.
But at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what an employment contract says, because "those with power can screw up your life if they really want to" remains the same no matter what the employment contract says.
A company can always have their legal department hound you to the ends of the Earth, forcing you to spend a few hundred thousand dollars defending yourself, and yeah, you might win in the end, and the company will say "our bad, lol", but you're still out a few hundred thousand dollars.
So in a way, what does it matter if a company can fine you a few thousand dollars. They can do the same by abusing our legal system against any person.
If this is the state of US contract law, how can you do business there? Surely this is bullshit? If it really is this bad, and the judges don't understand why it's a problem, then why is there a US economy?
If it is real, I assume it's literally only applied against poor people? I don't have to fear this in business contracts when I start a company?