Check out our series of “Deep Dives” co-published by National Employment Law Project (NELP) and Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) and written by a variety of experts. The series details how lawmakers and regulators at city, county, and state levels all have the ability to stop worker debt traps, and can deliver on the promise to ban Training Repayment Agreement Provisions (better known as TRAPs).
Each Deep Dive reviews the use of TRAPs under the prism of existing state laws, even when there is not an explicit prohibition on TRAPs themselves, and highlights how existing state consumer protection, unfair competition laws, or wage and hour laws may make most TRAPs illegal.
- Deep-Dive Series Kickoff Blog Here: How Cities and States Can Unlock Workers Across the Country from TRAPs
- Deep Dive on Labor Protections: How Labor Protections Allows Cities and States to Combat Worker Traps
- Deep Dive on Antitrust Protections: State Law Provides an Untapped Route to Combat TRAPs and Other Coercive Contracts
- Deep Dive on Consumer Protections: When Employers Turn Employees into Consumers, State and Local Regulators Must Turn to Consumer Protection Law
Following the conclusion of our Deep Dive series, NELP and SBPC hosted a virtual briefing with experts in labor, consumer, and antitrust law for a robust discussion on how local government regulators and lawmakers can immediately begin to challenge the growing use of training repayment agreement provisions, aka TRAPs on July 31, 2024. You can find a recording of the presentation here.
This conversation and Deep Dive series built on the Biden-Harris Administration’s whole-of-government approach to combat TRAPs, with action taken by the National Labor Relations Board, the U.S. Department of Labor, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Now lawmakers and regulators at the city, county, and state levels have an opportunity to build on these actions, and mobilize to protect workers and honest businesses by driving the use of TRAPs and other stay-or-pay contracts out of the economy.
Following the virtual briefing, SBPC also released a toolkit for state policymakers laying out model legislation, and including a legislative tracker and other resources for how to stop TRAPs. We hope that this can be a useful resource for any lawmakers and advocacy organizations looking to explicitly prohibit the use of TRAPs, and will be making periodic updates to it.
Be sure to visit the TRAPs page of SBPC’s website to learn more about our work!