Hey all, first time posting here but been lurking for more than a year now. Great stuff, great info. Thanks for everything.
Anyway, someone I know told me that their employer had asked them to do 32 hours of unpaid training outside work hours and to complete it by a certain date. This was a written request and specifies that it is being required as a result of the contract which the employer holds with a client of theirs.
Separately, during a verbal conversation, the employer implied that if the training was not completed, there could be but would not necessarily be, a cut in pay.
Reading into this, I suspect that what this means is that failure to complete the training makes my friend ineligible to work on their currently assigned contract and would force the employer to move them to a new, possibly less lucrative, contract with fewer requirements.
Does this count as mandatory training or is optional because my friend could get reassigned to another client? Does a reassignment or cut in pay count as retaliation if the employer is forced to do it to adhere to the client contract? Or is this perhaps something else entirely?
What's the best way to either get paid for the training or avoid it altogether without a cut in pay?