I’m interested in being a part-time captain for a yacht club in Taiwan. Besides having a professional boating license, they also require completion of a 3-day internal job training course, but get this: They require the job candidate to pay for the TW$60K course out of pocket.
Is that legal?
Sounds like a total scam to me. Taiwanese businesses are well known for coming up with all kinds of b.s. ideas to rip people off. Some years ago an employment agency that brought in south East Asian workers to Taiwan was requiring them to pay $1,000 ntd for a van ride back to the airport when their contract was up. The bus only cost around $40 or $50 ntd. These kind of stories can go on and. Is it legal? Perhaps. But, these scumbags will stop at nothing to rip you off. This is probably not the only way they try and screw people over. How often will they require this kind of training?
This sounds dodgy as hell.
If you are going to become a captain of a yacht, then there are unions associated with this job. Talk to them.
Seems like a total scam/ripoff to me too, especially given that the training is apparently internal.
Is this actually a (paid) job, or would it just be a hobby? And if the former, would paying NT$60k so you can do the job make sense? In my mind, this should be covered by the employer because they also benefit from it.
I believe employers are allowed to attempt to recoup legitimate training costs in case of breach of contract etc. (though they can’t deduct it directly from the employee’s salary, and the employee being expected to pay upfront sounds really weird).
This doesn’t sound like a real job, more like a hobby. If you want to take people sky diving, the sky diving company might have required training that they provide to prospective employees.
I’m also thinking of white water rafting, an area where I have some expertise. Rafting companies will often offer training certification for prospective river guides, but they don’t certify you for free even though you need the certification for insurance purposes
No.
you either come fully trained already, or they pay for your training.
i believe it is legal to ask you to pay back for training the employer provided if you quit before a certain amount of time.
a friend of mine was sent to 6 months technical training in Switzerland, and had to sign a commitment that he cant quit the company for 2 years, or he has to pay back the cost of the training.
Or, if this is a very lucrative position, you might need to fork over some money to “buy in”. Maybe ask around if possible with people in that type of field (probably not here).
does seem dodgy. But normally jobs assume you paid for your education (ie. university) before you show up.
So one might give them the benefit of the doubt and say they would hire you if you are qualified. If they dont, and require this class. scam. but many companies require employees to pay for things they ought not to. for example, mandatory uniforms.
Yeah that sounds fine to me, but what took me by surprise is that this mandatory NT$60k “training” is only an internal certification. It does not help me get a job at any other company.
Does that sound fishy?
A bit fishy
It might also be a filter to keep out poor people, or unserious part time yacht captains
Have you been to the place, know anyone there?
It’s a one-time training at the beginning of employment. Actually, anyone can take this training even if they don’t want to work for the club. It allows them to rent yachts without captains (at this specific club only), in addition to allowing them to make money piloting other people.
Yeah I believe that’s the main reason they’re doing it, but fishy nonetheless.
I have a “job interview” with them Thursday (really a sales pitch for the training course). We’ll see how it goes.
Can you get them to agree to give you a certain number of hours or trips in your first year, so you get a guaranteed payback on your investment?
To put into perspective,
Previously, to work in offshore wind, your employer, be it wind turbine OEM, vessel providers, developers or others, will book a GWO basic safety training for you as the basic to do offshore activities. Company pays of course.
https://www.mtic.org.tw/EduClass?ModuleID=G1
However, these days, with a lot of people interested but less actually qualified, or people simply hired then fail, the are situations where employer require you to have the basic safety training certification ready when you are hired. Naturally, since these before your employment, it will be out of your own pocket expenses.
Yeah I don’t know. My main concern is that they offer me “employment” upon giving them money for the course and then tell me afterwards that they don’t have enough business to require my services.
I think that’s a little different, because they don’t require you to pay them for said training. You can choose to receive the training elsewhere.
In the scenario I’m talking about, the yacht club is requiring a specific training from them, and the training is pretty much worthless anywhere else.
Probably a scam then.
I remember reading something on Quora from a well known book author. He said that money flows from the publisher to the author, ALWAYS.
Same rule goes with jobs. Money flows from employer to employees, ALWAYS. Anything else is a scam.
In a normal situation, an employer should be paying for your training, but can require a mandatory amount of time that you’re supposed to work for them, or else you’ll be expected to pay them back (or a certain amount of the money they paid back). I’m thinking of things like masters degrees and special licenses for teachers or language training for military members. The employer is “investing” in the employee, with the expectation that the employee is going to have more skills than they originally had coming in. But it makes sense to say “you will work for us for x years or owe us back the $Y amount”. Otherwise people would take advantage of the “free” (to the employee) education and then leave soon thereafter for an even better paying/work conditions job. But to say “pay us NT$60,000 for our training course”? If they’re not going to guarantee hours and pay (with a signed contract), that’s a heck of a lot of money to ask for.
Yeah. I ended up passing them up.