Contract signed at work under duress

[Francesca1001]

Hi all.

My DH is a manager at a medium-sized company. At the end of January he was offered a course which is completed over 2 years by distance learning. He began the course at the beginning of February. However, his HR Manager has now presented him with a contract stating that if he leaves the company within 4 years he will be liable to pay £9000 to reimburse them for his course! However, the company only paid £400 for the course as it is government subsidised.

DH said he wasn't happy about signing the contract but they said he had to. He signed it but put the date next to his signature to show that it had been signed retrospective to the course starting.

Tomorrow he has to go into a meeting with the HR manager because he had expressed his concern over signing the contract. I told him to get a copy of it.

Is this actually legal? Can an employer actually stipulate that someone is not allowed to leave unless they pay £9000? We couldn't afford this anyway. He does want to move on because there is no chance of promotion at this company.

Thanks in advance

The subsidy might be subject to conditions and full fee payable in certain circumstances.

I’ve heard of those kind of contacts before but surely that should’ve been explained up front so people have an opportunity not to do it!

Sounds dodgy they made him sign later on, is he a member of a union he could talk to?

It's a very normal practice and the claw back after completion is so his current company get some benefit of the course he did.

Is he sure there wasn't company policy provided to him (or directed to an intranet site) with all this info?

Pretty normal. In my experience. If I left my job tomorrow I’d owe my employer a fair bit.

Is the amount payable pro rata?

I have a team member currently undertaking a mid-long term course and she has the same clawback clause.

However, this was clearly explained to her before she agreed to do the course, and was all in writing before she started.

Training agreements are fine but they should be (a) entered into before the course starts and any money is paid out and (b) reasonable. 4 years “golden handcuffs” effectively is ridiculous. Does the amount owing go down on a sliding scale? It would likely be unreasonable if he left after 3 years 9 months to expect repayment of the whole £9000!

Based on the info given I’d say there was a reasonable chance this contractual term would be unenforceable

Also, they couldn’t stop him leaving. The issue is whether they’d be entitled to recoup the money from him, via deduction from wages or otherwise, if they did.

No he's not a member of a union but we're going to take the contract to CAB to see if they can offer any advice

Pretty normal to have some clawback clauses for training.

In practice, may just mean they deduct what they can from his last months wages which would unlikely be £9k. Then they'd have to pursue it further to get the rest and as others said above chances are it's not worth their while, plus you'd then be able to argue it's unreasonable.

At the moment, Id suggest writing a letter to outline your position - that there was no prior notice, the terms are unreasonable and ask for copy of the policy that covers this and see what they say. I'd state what you do consider reasonable - if the course cost them £400 then surely that's the amount they have a claim over - and these things normally have a sliding scale as well as time goes on.

I'm not a lawyer but work in HR. Perhaps post in employment issues for an alternative view.