Corporations Are Now Fining Employees For Quitting
Corporations Are Now Fining Employees For Quitting
We're entering a new phase in widespread economic exploitation
Stay or pay.
That’s the new threat corporate vampires are laying on the working contributor class.
In America, where Mammon is god and everything must be slaughtered on the altar of shareholder profit, quitting has become the newest source of revenue, costing some employees tens of thousands of dollars just to break free from their greedy overlords.
The most common stay-or-pay clause is called a Training Repayment Agreement Provision.
Yes, it’s a literal TRAP.
You cannot make this stuff up.
Before we dig into it, let’s not lose sight of the corporatocracy’s big picture:
Monopolize all the resources…
So the only way everyday people can access resources is to a.) borrow those resources at interest, b.) rent them at a hefty fee, or c.) create wealth for others while enduring wage suppression in order to create a profit margin for the resource-monopolizers…
So the resource-monopolizers can then sell the new worker-created wealth back to workers at elevated prices…
Ensuring wages stay low enough and prices stay high enough that worker wages steadily decrease in real terms, prices rise in real terms, and more and more people live paycheck-to-paycheck and go into debt just to stay alive.
Capitalism, if you will recall, is all about “efficiency.”
Not efficiently creating well-being for all — efficiently creating maximal shareholder profits for the minimal amount of personal effort.
The resource-monopolizing shareholder class has the real economy vise-gripped in a death spiral and will keep humanity on this course until you own nothing.
Welcome to feudalism 2.0.
Want to stop working? That’ll be $100,000.
“Last year a former employee sued PetSmart after the biz required groomers to pay $5K if they quit within two years.”
“Earlier this year, a pilot sued Ameriflight after she said the cargo airline billed her $20K for quitting within 18 months.”
The stories are harrowing and utterly infuriating.
The New York Times dug up tons of awful cases:
The nurse who had to pay $10,000 to her employer after she quit her job at a nursing home that was understaffed, overworked, and unsafe.
The software engineer who was sued by his former employer for $30,000 after he left his job at a start-up that was struggling to survive.
The truck driver who is facing a $15,000 bill from his employer after he was fired for failing a drug test. He said that he was not informed of the contract when he was hired, and that he was addicted to opioids after a work-related injury. (He is now homeless and unable to pay the debt.)
Can you imagine such a nightmare?
Imagine your spouse gets sick and needs to go overseas for treatment.
Or your parent is dying and needs you to move back home for end-of-life care.
Or you just hate your job and find a better opportunity.
In a democratic, fair-rules market, you’d just get up and go.
But in the demonic rules-free-market corporatist gongshow that is American corporatist capitalism, it’s just one last chance to turn an unearned profit off the labor of others as they head out the door.
Epic Systems, a software company in the ultra-predatory “health” “care” space, forces ex-employees to fork over $25,000 if they leave in the first four years.
Cigna, an insurance company in the same space, got sued by a former employee who claimed workers were required to repay up to $100,000 if they left within two years.
This is literally indentured servitude.
The latest hard data (2020) says one in ten American workers was trapped under a stay-or-pay contract, with millions not even aware of the evil clause.
Experts now estimate that corporations have worked this wicked clause into a third of all US industries.
A decade or two from now, I bet you a house this will be a “standard clause” across the board.
How can corporations justify charging exit fees?
Seriously, in what universe is it moral, just, kind, or even sane to profit off someone’s labor, and when they try to leave, charge them tens of thousands of dollars to do so?
What’s the argument? What’s the rationale?
“We need to be reimbursed.” — every corporation
Reimbursed for what?
Do workers get reimbursed for all the profit they have to hand over to shareholders in order to gain access to monopolized resources that were once freely available to all?
As it turns out, corporations now believe they’re doing their workers a favor by putting them through orientation, and that if the worker leaves before the corporation has wrung sufficient profit out of them, the worker should have to reimburse them for the orientation.
I have news for corporations:
Orientation is part of the cost of doing business.
If it costs you money, raise your prices.
If raising your prices puts you out of business, great! Welcome to the competitive world of capitalism where only the strongest survive.
Let’s be honest, folks:
Corporations are free-market frauds.
Rather than developing the skills to discern good hires and offering sufficient incentives to actually get workers to stay, corporations are relying on despotic coercion and outright economic abuse to retain employees.
Training is part of the cost of doing business. If you can’t manage to keep employees without running an extortion racket, godspeed to the demise of your company and may you soon be bankrupt and never able to exploit another human for the rest of your life.
Evil companies don’t deserve to exist.
Why now?
Why are TRAP clauses suddenly invading millions of contracts across the nation?
As it turns out, it’s just the corporatocracy’s slimy move in response to a government crackdown on non-compete clauses.
Non-competes are a pox on the real economy, shackling workers from top tech firms to lowly fast food jobs.
Amazon has forced its warehouse workers, delivery drivers, and even seasonal employees to sign noncompetes that forbid them from working for competitors within a year and a half of serving time at Amazon. The trillion-dollar company has sued former employees who needed work and took it elsewhere, even at jobs like Google and Microsoft that aren’t direct competitors to the e-retail leviathan.
At Jimmy John’s, poor workers can’t work at another sub shop within three miles for two years.
IBM, Oracle, and Medtronic all keep workers off the table for more than a year after they quit these predator firms, stifling innovation, crushing worker mobility, and restricting human freedom.
Uber — one of the vilest corporations in America — sues drivers who work for competitors like Lyft and DoorDash (but I thought they were “independent contractors?”)
McDonald’s, WeWork, Apple, and Lowe’s… they all use noncompetes.
Remember, non-competes are LITERALLY anti-competition, which is illegal.
If the FTC does the righteous thing next year and decides to ban non-competes, it will free 30 million workers and boost worker pay by $300 billion.
So, if corporations will no longer be allowed to keep workers working for the competition, they’ll shift to forcing the workers to keep working for them using TRAP clauses.
This is the monopolization of labor.
It’s the economic enslavement of the working class.
Quick hypocrisy check
But let’s not get too judgy about the rampant corporate abuse of the working contributor class.
After all, it’s pretty profitable.
If you have a retirement portfolio, there’s a 99.9% chance you’re a member of the resource-monopolizing parasite predator class who is directly profiting from these exploitative tactics.
Not only that, but if you’re the typical spendy consumer, there’s a high chance you’ve given these wicked corporations your hard-earned money, too.
History repeats itself
Remember, friends: Corporations will not stop until they are stopped.
Repeat this phrase every single day in the mirror.
Corporations will not stop until they are stopped.
They will not stop lowering real-term wages.
They will not stop raising prices.
They will not stop monopolizing resources.
They will not stop gobbling up competitors.
They will not stop buying governments.
They will not stop destroying the planet.
And they certainly will not stop exploiting employees.
The corporatocracy will continue to grind the stone harder and harder until the working class bleeds, breaks, rises up, and murders the resource-hoarding class.
(For real-world examples of this cycle, see: All of human history.)
What must be done
I am not a fan of revolution.
It’s far too bloody.
I prefer revival.
But in our godless, meaningless, hyper-individualist, screen-addicted consumerist age, I don’t see one coming.
Still, the corporatocracy must be stopped.
Our non-violent options are extremely limited, but if we claim to be moral and good, swift actions must be taken:
Sell all stocks and bonds. Stop enriching and empowering these predators who make you an unearned profit thanks to gross exploitation. Convince everyone you know to do the same.
Transition your spending to non-exploitative companies (sole proprietorships, family businesses, equal partnerships, co-operatives, not-for-profits, single-purpose/for-benefits, and commons-owned companies.) Convince everyone you know to do the same.
Stop voting for corporatists. Voting red/blue/blue/red is for insane people. You’re throwing away your vote if you vote for corporatists. If you’re one to waste time voting, vote for independent candidates, just so history will know there were a few sane people left. Convince everyone you know to do the same. If the majority of people start voting for independents, it will force the corporatocracy to finally throw off the disguise of democracy… which will speed along the revolution and/or revival.
Oh, and one more thing:
If you are ever asked to sign a contract with a non-compete or a TRAP clause, raise a stink to high heaven.
Nevermind contacting your corporatist (s)elected officials or the mainstream corporatist media — go straight to Reddit, Twitter, social media, and the progressive/alternative press.
Also: look the employer straight in the eye, find their humanity, and speak the truth, call them to account for participating in this wickedness.
Call their spouses and mothers and pastors, too.
Trap agreements are extortion, indentured servitude, and economic abuse, and no civilized person should stay silent about this heinous injustice.