Legality of an employment contract

[MassiveJim]

Context, my partner started a new job around 4 months ago and this is part of her contract.
She isn't thinking of leaving right now but may do in the future.
All the training undertaken is relevant only to her job and company ie. She doesn't get a qualification at the end of it, and is unable to work in her job without it
The company regularly runs "top-up" training courses every 2 years.
A friend of hers did 2 weeks of training and left before starting work and has just received a "bill" for over £2k.


She has also heard from other members that this company has pursued past employees in court for the money and won. (This bit cannot be confirmed 100% however )

 

[MassiveJim]

To clarify, it is all in house training, either delivered by a company employed trainer in a physical classroom or online courses done from home, there is no certification/qualification other than a check sheet to say that said training has been completed. My partner spent around 3 weeks doing just training whilst she was waiting for a DBS check to come back.

She has already signed it btw, she didn't even run it past me facepalm.gif

In terms of the company and scummy/shady practices, that is 100% the case, other things have occurred (not relevant to this thread however)

 

[MassiveJim]

So the day has finally arrived.

My partner has officially left (well she has actually switched over to a "bank" contract), she has received a bill for £2377.88


Wondering the best course of action to take here.

1 - Ignore it
2 - agree to pay monthly and then cancel the DD (other people have apparently done this and heard no more, although this is hearsay and I have no proof that it will actually work)
3 - pay for legal advice, and then fight it (this is obviously a cost to us)

or
4 - the fact that there is clause 19.5 and 19.6 greys the lines somewhat, as it could be argued that it was all effectively induction training and that now she has completed her probationary period clause 19.5 no longer applies, and 19.6 doesn't apply as she hasn't had further training since the induction.

further to this as she is now a bank worker for them, she still requires the same training to carry out the job as and when she picks up a shift.

 

[MassiveJim]

That's not how I'm reading it. I believe it's essentially saying, leave within probation period and you pay full whack. Leave within 2 years of training and a sliding scale applies. You need to find out what the "sliding scale" is, I'd expect it to be something like 100%, 75%, 50%, 25% for each 6 month block, something like that. But if she hasn't been provided the sliding scale that seems dodgy. So assuming it's between 6 and 12 months since her training then it would be 75% due (if that was the scale).

19.8 lays out the sliding scale, 100% before month 1, reducing by 1/24th for each month worked.

So this is why this sort of clause exists, she's basically got her employer to pay for her training earlier this year, now she's left and gone 'contracting' in a role that requires the training. They don't want to be a factory for producing bank workers, paying for all their training and then they use that training to land bank gigs, not only are they out of pocket for the training but the cost of the bank staff will exceed FTE.

The training is not transferrable, ie it is essentially compulsory induction training, no member of staff is able to work at this company without it.
I believe that if she had started as a bank worker in the first place they would have put her through the exact same training.

If you start arguing it surely they won't give her any more hours?

So just to clarify, she is moving to another full time job, but with little scope for overtime, this is the reason for remaining on bank so she can pick up some overtime.
Because this is a pretty shady company, they have awful staff turnover, they are always short staffed and there are always shifts up for grabs.
Her only concern is that they will just take the money from her pay slip as and when she picks up shifts.

When you say a bank worker - are we talking somebody who was full time, trained, then at the same company moved into a role that is effectively part time and used to cover for illness/maternity or whatever?

They are having a laugh if they think that's acceptable to charge somebody for.

Yes exactly that.

 

[MassiveJim]

£3k for 3 weeks of internal training? Lol.
Have they provided any information about how they are calculating that cost? It sounds more like they are trying to get the 3 weeks wages they paid her back than the cost of the course.

Note that this was a week of training at their head office in a classroom.
Then a couple of weeks spent at home doing online courses, which they appear to be charging @ £50 per time, each course taking an hour or 2 to complete.

 

[MassiveJim]

Yes every employee gets the same treatment, the letter/email asking for these costs back is normally sent within 2 days of the employees last working day.

She has called and spoken to someone and contested it on the basis that all employees have to complete this training, INCLUDING bank staff.
So to put it another way, had she been on bank initially she would have had to carry out the exact same training. Therefore she still needs this training to be able to work on bank shifts.
But as expected they claim she still has to pay it.

She has agreed (for now) to let them take a £75 payment out of her next wage, and I am awaiting a solicitor calling me back to give further advice.


As for the minimum wage thing, does that rule apply only to the time spent training ?
or would they calculate it based on her entire tenure at the company ?

She was paid around £300 more than minimum wage for the 2 weeks she spent training, therefore it would stand to reason that they can only bill her for this amount.

My partner has spoken with previous employees, and some have ignored it completely, others have agreed to a payment plan (£50 a month or similar) and then cancelled the standing order after a couple of months, and they all report that they haven't been pursued for it. however we are talking about a few months, i don't know if the company will go after these people in 6/12 months time

Leaving aside the point at hand, everyone have a look down that list of training and pick your top5 most 'disturbing' modules. My wife does all this stuff and more, so when you think you've had a bad day at work, consider the absolute ****** up **** some people have to deal with.

Its very grim, she has shared an odd story with me from past jobs working with children and I definitely couldn't work in that area.
We sometimes get a little snippet of the kind of thing that goes on in the news with stories like baby P and Arthur Hughes.