A TRAP for workers

Oops, we re-invented indenture.

One of the weirdest parts of conspiratorialism is the hunt for anagrams as secret expressions of guilt. Ken Cheng’s recent BBC Comedy of the Week show, he has a great bit on this, pointing out how weird it is that someone figured out that “delta” and “omicron” are an anagram for “media control.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ckq7pb

As Cheng says, “do they think the coronavirus was invented by Tom Marvolo Riddle?” And yet, sometimes, villains really do use word-games to tip their hands. How else to explain that Petsmart’s predatory “job training” scheme for new hires is called TRAP?

https://www.wired.com/story/contract-clause-loading-us-workers-with-debt/

TRAP — “training repayment agreement provision” — was billed as a free job training scheme for new Petsmart hires, a 4-week program to teach you to groom cats and dogs. But this “free” program actually loaded new hires up with $5500 in debt that they owed to the company if they quit, got fired, or were laid off within two years.

https://twitter.com/LifeatPetSmart/status/1148626627389267969

In a darkly hilarious turn, TRAP didn’t even train you to groom pets. As a new class action suit led by ex-Petsmart employee BreAnn Scally reveals, most of the “training” was just sweeping floors, and the “four-week” course ended after three weeks.

https://protectborrowers.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/PetSmart-complaint_file.pdf

As Caitlin Harrington writes for Wired, California law actually prohibits these schemes, barring employers from clawing back training expenses unless they “primarily benefit the worker.” Additionally, California employers are prohibited from “operating as an unlicensed post-secondary school.”

But employers know that workers are at a disadvantage when it comes to enforcing these laws. Indeed, it’s hard to know how Scally — who was making $15/hour and relying on family members to cover her monthly shortfall — could have sought justice against the private equity backed Petsmart except through class-action suits.

It’s easy for employers to bar their workers from participating in class-action suits: all they need to do is…