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Comment by reduce | Hacker News Reader

"For fresh grad though, if they quit earlier than 18 months, they have to pay almost a year of their salary, which seems reasonable when there are trainings when they joined the company."

No, that is not ever reasonable anywhere in any situation. May be typical, but not reasonable.

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That is a form of debt slavery and violates their human rights in a number of ways

Could you describe what rights are being violated and the framework in which the rights are couched? I certainly agree that the practice is wrong, but I was unaware of the existence of that degree of specificity in currently-accepted definitions of human rights. Is there a body of case law that is supposed to aid in the interpretation of questions like what exactly constitutes slavery?

The UHDR states that individuals should be free from discrimination, I have no idea what that's supposed to mean when applied universally.

I don't even know what a 'right' is in this context. Are we speaking in the same sense as they are defined in the US Constitution, that governments must respect the laws but private enterprises do not? Or is it meant in a stronger sense, that private enterprises must do so as well, or even individuals? If the latter, how are we supposed to interpret the prohibition against violating a person's free speech rights?

> Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Does this mean that we are now setting education policy across the whole Earth? How strong is this policy supposed to be? Does one class on human rights during secondary school satisfy the requirement?

I was referring to the UN UDR

Article 4

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 23

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. •(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. •(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. •(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

And if you just want to limit to just to the US constitution the 13th amendment

The US government does the same thing to the American students they give "CyberCorps" scholarships to. They have an obligation to remain in government jobs for the same number of years that they received the scholarship for and if they want to leave early they have to repay the scholarship.

https://www.sfs.opm.gov/

In that case, they repay the scholarship, not the salary.

For an entry level government job the scholarship probably is equivalent to a year of salary. Point being this sort of service requirement for scholarship is pretty common and isn't some practice relegated to shady companies on the other side of the world.

Same is true for ROTC scholarships and service academy (e.g. West Point) enrollment.

Not really. If one drops out of a service academy or ROTC before the beginning of junior (3rd) year, one owes nothing. Also, the rules about this are spelled out in explicit detail, not just in the fine print in a caveat-emptor kind of way, but to one's face in a way that is impossible to misinterpret. I very highly doubt the same is true for people coming to the US on H1-B visas.

Charging people for company-specific training is exploitative. It's not a charitable act on the company's part; it's necessary to create, maintain, and grow a competent workforce. Also, training is often marketed as compensation, and companies can't have it two ways: it's either compensation or it's not, and if you market it as such then clawing back the "value" of training is as unethical as clawing back the cash you paid the employee for the time they were there.

I've had a few experiences interviewing South Asian guys on H1-B visas where they were trying to game the interview really hard and it was awkward at the time and I was angry after the fact that this person had made it past a phone screen. Reading what life is like for these guys, I'll have a little more empathy next time.

For private companies in the US, I've never encountered having to repay training expenses. (Though it wouldn't surprise me if there were obligations around getting a degree program paid for and that sort of thing; I've never been in that sort of situation.) However, I have seen a company go after relocation expenses from someone who was moved cross-country and, shortly thereafter, quit.

Sort of... But not the same, especially when the training is glorified or nonexistent in the case of the body shops. In the go ernment case, there's a formula to calculate balance owed which is for a recognized form of education that is marketable and tangible.

It strikes me as a debatable point, which is what I believe fadzlan is saying. The company gets particularly cheap labor, the fresh grad gets training and real experience they can put on their resume. Plenty of people in the US are willing to work for free (intern) to get the latter.

Working for free is completely different, because you're never in a trap where you owe the employer any repayment. I don't really see how you could claim these scenarios are the same at all.

These type of debt bond contracts are the foundation that has been used to legally justify modern slavery for hundreds, if not thousands of years. It's still the legal foundation of slavery in the many places where it's practiced today. Add to that, do you realize the extend to which it's still legally possible to enforce debt repayment in many countries? "Debt" is an extremely bad condition to be in, that can legally allow all kinds of terrible things to happen to you, if you're in certain countries.

Employees should absolutely never be put into the situation where they owe monetary repayment to an employer, in any conditions, except for if the employees break some kind of universal criminal law.

Debt bond in a country where that's not dischargeable or otherwise evadable is indeed such a legal foundation. From the way fadzlan portrayed Malaysia I didn't get the impression it was so dire there.

All I'm saying is that it's a debatable point, to which I'll add the caveat of your slavery point. Per the article some US courts agree, even the win described at the end of it meant the case wasn't struck down as a matter of law, a jury was required for fact finding.

Having worked with an brilliant exploited H-1B holder before at Lucent, earning 60% what I was for a job he was arguably as qualified for, you can guess on which side of the debate I'm on.

the [client] company is charged a full rate for this headcount.

the [contracting] company pays a cheap price.

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