So there is this company,
When they hire you, they first give you a 2 to 7 months training (depending on the level you choose to and can reach) to become an IT engineer, and during that training they pay you.
Not a ton from what I’ve been told, but they pay you. Side-note, they also sponsor your visa if you need one. (I will need to extend mine, so this is appealing to me.)
They don’t require you to have a tech background, just the right mindset to learn the skills.
Then you find a job with a company in their clients portfolio, and I assume they take a portion of your salary.
BUT: if you leave them before 2 years, they require you to _refund_ your training, and apparently this is in the contract.
I don’t know how much they evaluate the cost of their training, but potentially I guess it can be a lot.
– Is it legal to ask for this?
– When companies ask for this, are you actually legally binded and you actually have to pay back?
– Or is it something they ask to avoid losing you but don’t actually have legal means to enforce you to do?
Not that I think it’s unfair, they’ve been paying you to teach you a job, so it’s very uncool to them if you just say ciao bye bye after that, but, I would like to know.
Do you have any information or experience about this matter?
Thank you very much in advance.
6 comments
As you describe it, it’s predetermined indemnity, and is unlawful under Article 16 of the Labour Standards Act.
The only way this can be done legally is for the company to loan employees the tuition to attend outside training, with the loan to be expunged after a certain period (and for the employee to agree to the loan terms). It must be separate from salary, and it can’t be in-house training, as that would be a conflict of interest. And even then, it may still be judged to be in violation of Article 16.
I know exactly what company you’re referring to and it’s a scam. It’s buried deep in their terms but you’ll get a pittance of around 200,000 JPY per month for their “training”, and if you leave, get fired, or they terminate your contract ‘for any reason’, they will try to charge you 100,000 JPY ***PER DAY OF TRAINING RECEIVED***.
Stay far, far away.
Just on that visa note… “sponsoring” a visa doesn’t mean anything here. It’s not a big deal in Japan. It doesn’t cost them much. Same fee as if you were to file your visa application yourself.
They might as well just be a bootcamp.
In the medical field, I’ve seen a new employer paying an employee’s debt to their previous employer on the condition of working for them (like those football transfer). It’s relatively common for doctors and nurses in Japan at the start of their careers, but I have no idea if that ever happens in IT.
A lot of contracts in Japan seem to have this kind of unenforceable nonsense written into them, usually the company probably got burned in the past by some foreigners who came for a free visa and training and just ditched them when they were done so they tried to come up with a safeguard without consulting a lawyer or anything.