My question involves labor and employment law for the state of: New York.
My company does not provide the physical tools we need in order to replace hardware on printers, laptops, and computers and all employees have to make sure they have all they need. They argue it is because we then are able to take these tools and use them for another job. They also have mandatory training, which we sign a contract for stating how much we would compensate the company if we quit after the training and it is pro-rated over 6 months (if $1,000 or less) or 12 months (if more than $1,000). Each training has a value attached to it and when asked how that value/price was come to, I was basically told to not worry about it.
This is a process that employees go through every couple of months so we are always under contract to compensate the company if we leave. They say that if it's an emergency (i.e. death in the family, family moves away, etc) that something would be worked out but that's not the case for most people thinking about leaving. It seems like the company is trying to profit off of us even more than they already do when we work our regular hours. Management says that we need the training in order to keep the work we have and get more client contracts. That seems like to me that it would be in the best interest of the company to have trained employees and so I believe that they should be providing the training without looking for compensation if we quit because they wouldn't have a company without those at the bottom. In the internship, we were told that employees are the most important part of a company (other people were managers and customers) but to me and my fellow coworkers it doesn't feel that way.
Also, I was told by a coworker that we don't have to take any training we don't want but I was already made to do two trainings in which someone read from a PowerPoint slideshow that we were then given access to, and not just us but anyone who asks in the company regardless if you were there. So essentially, I just shackled myself with potential debt. I also have to do more mandatory customer service training, which makes no sense because it's the same thing every three months and no one in my department has any issues with customer service relations. I understand we should be in tip top shape but it's just role playing and watching the same good tech/bad tech video and discussing the same things I did 3 times since I started my job.
I came to this site in order to understand what rights I and my company have. It's the threat of looming, crippling debt that bothers me and my coworkers.

