NISKAYUNA — A Niskayuna resident who was sued by a former employer to recoup training expenses has spurred proposed labor legislation from Assemblymember Phil Steck, D-Colonie to address training repayment agreement provisions (TRAPs).
The provisions require workers to pay prohibitive sums if they leave a job before a certain time period.
When Trish D’Allaird took a job with a local lash studio for a part-time job, as a condition of her $14-per-hour job, the Niskayuna resident was required to sign an agreement to stay with the employer for one year or risk being sued for $5,000 for training reimbursement.
According to D’Allaird, the training consisted of a co-worker demonstrating how to apply lashes on a client, a process that she was already intimately familiar with as a licensed cosmetologist.
Following her exit from the shop, D’Allaird was sued by the employer for alleged training costs.
“In the hourly wages I was making, if this training reimbursement held, I literally would have worked four months and would have been paying the employer money at the end of it,” she said. “I’m walking away with no training. I’ve been licensed for over 20 years and I could have performed these tasks legally and lawfully on my own without any training or having worked there. Because I signed a piece of paper, I’m being held accountable for this money.”
After learning of D’Allaird’s story, Steck introduced legislation to protect residents from TRAPs, which Steck contends violate minimum wage laws.
The proposed state bill would prohibit employers from requiring TRAPs in employment contracts and enforcing them in state court.
“Trish’s story just highlighted for me that I’ve seen these efforts over the years,” Steck said. “She was working in an occupation that doesn’t require highly technical training, it’s a low-wage occupation. Yet her employer was basically trying to convert her wages to zero by making her responsible to pay for training.”
Steck compared the employment contracts to the classic country song “Sixteen Tons.”
“There’s a famous song by Tennessee Ernie Ford where he sings, ‘I owe my soul to the company store,’” he said. “This is the same thing. You’re not having to buy tools and all that, but they’re saying, ‘We trained you and you owe your soul to us.’ That has not been the law since the 1930s and it should not be the law now.”
D’Allaird said that she hopes the proposed legislation can be passed and implemented as soon as possible to assist people who are in the same situation that she found herself in.
“That is my ultimate hope,” she said. “I was doing this career for the fun of it later in life. I’ve been licensed for over 20 years and I have teenage kids. There are girls just walking out of high school with their cosmetology license walking into these situations and they are physically stuck in these jobs. They’re stuck there because they’re afraid they can’t pay the rent or their car payments. They’re 20 years old and I feel horrible for them. I know 25 or more girls in that situation right now and they can’t leave.”
Since Steck’s legislation was introduced in the Assembly in May it has been endorsed by the New York State Nurses Association and the Student Borrower Protection Center.
The proposed bill would clearly define which employment contract terms have the effect of creating debt at work for employees.
D’Allaird said that before TRAPs legislation is passed that she would not recommend that workers sign training reimbursement agreements.
“I would say not to sign an agreement like this,” she said. “If your income and food on your table depended on it, that might be one scenario, but then you’re being forced to sign something that you shouldn’t be signing. At the same time, it’s not right. You’d have to have an attorney review these to make sure that you have a loophole to get out and to make sure that you’re getting the training that they’re promising.”
Contact Ted Remsnyder at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @TedRemsnyder.
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