In April, Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) introduced H.R. 2262, the Flexibility for Workers Education Act. The bill aims to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) to exclude from employees’ hours worked educational or skills-based training offered by employers.
Under current legislation, training related to one’s job must be compensated by their employer, regardless of whether it is mandatory and whether it occurs during work hours. This means that even if such training is voluntary and done outside an employee’s working schedule, they must be compensated for it.
Hinson’s bill comes on the heels of widespread hiring difficulties among small businesses. In March, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) reported that 53 percent of small business owners were “hiring or trying to hire,” yet 87 percent of those respondents said they found few or no qualified applicants to fill open positions.
Under H.R. 2262, time spent in voluntary training, education, or lectures outside regular working hours would not count as paid work, provided that participation is genuinely voluntary, opting out does not affect employment conditions, and no productive work is performed during the training. Rep. Hinson argues that the bill should make it easier for business owners to find qualified employees and for workers to access skills development opportunities that can advance their careers. Her bill, she says, would encourage employers to invest more in their current staff, making it easier to promote from within and expand job opportunities for existing employees.
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Some employers back this sentiment.
Sam Caucci, founder and CEO of 1Huddle—a workforce coaching and development platform that prepares employees for jobs through quick-burst games—and a long-time advocate for H.R. 2262, explained in an interview with Minding the Campus how current law limits employer-provided training. He described a scenario in which a hotel wants to offer staff a course on becoming a manager at one of its properties. Under the current FLSA, such training would likely be deemed “non-transferable,” meaning the skills gained could not easily be applied elsewhere. In this case, the hotel would be required to pay employees for the time spent in the course, even if participation were voluntary. Most corporate training programs fall into this “non-transferable” category, making them costly and risky for employers to provide.
Caucci says that “Under the current law, we are not allowing employers to offer career development skills to workers as freely as they would.” As a result, employees often miss out on opportunities to develop skills that could lead to promotions or higher-paying jobs.
H.R. 2262 aims to change this. Easing restrictions would allow even non-transferable programs to be offered without mandatory compensation, giving employers more freedom to expand training and career development opportunities. But as Caucci argues, the bill does more than ease burdens on employers—it strikes at higher education’s credentialing power.
By making it easier for employers to deliver their own skills-based training, the legislation undermines higher ed’s role as the nation’s de facto “credentialing mill,” as it opens the door for private-sector alternatives to credentials.
As Caucci explains, “The impact for higher education is that, one, it will force academia to create education that’s more meaningful, because they will now be competing with the skills offered from employers.” Colleges like the way current law is written because it gives them “an embargo, a monopoly, on what is a transferable skill,” he said. “If Starbucks offers how-to-write-a-resume training, it’s not transferable. But if you go to Miami Dade College, or FIU, and you do a how-to-write-a-resume class, it is.”
“The best person to train a worker is an employer, period,” Caucci added. “They’re the closest to the employee experience, and they understand it best.”
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Still, he does not discount the value of higher education. He explained that if employers are encouraged to offer more voluntary, skills-based training, it could actually expand opportunities for colleges to connect with potential students. “If employees get better skills, they’re always going to demand more skills,” Caucci noted. For example, if a worker is promoted because of training gained on the job, they may naturally feel inclined to pursue more education to continue climbing the career ladder.
While existing laws on job training provide some benefits for workers—most notably paid overtime—the requirement that employers compensate employees for voluntary training outside of regular hours often discourages companies from offering such opportunities at all. As a result, workers miss out on valuable educational and skills-based training that could help advance their careers.
If the proposed bill is passed, employers believe they will have greater incentives to provide training to employees, giving workers greater chances to retain their jobs, earn promotions, and build skills that open the door to more advanced career prospects in the future.
The bill has completed a markup session, according to Congress.gov, but its passage in the House remains uncertain.
Image: “Ashley Hinson” by Team Hinson on Flickr
This is as bad an idea as the “punishment for a crime” exception to the 13th Amendment, and inevitably will be abused as badly.
First and foremost, there is no shortage of labor in this country — not for employers who are willing to pay workers what they are worth and treat them decently. And it’s often more the “treat them decently” than the money.
For example, I once worked filling orders for LL Bean. They hire a lot of people each fall, promise them good paying full time benefited jobs if they work hard for minimum wage, only to lay them all off after Christmas. I saw the writing on the wall and got a different job — and every fall for years afterwards, I would receive a letter asking me if I would like a career with LL Bean…
Located in what was then a relatively rural part of Maine, LL Bean wound up burning through the local labor pool — everyone who would be interested in working for them either already had or knew someone who had — and they had to move operations down to Portland to access that larger labor market.
I’ve seen predictions that Amazon is very close to burning through its pool of potential employees nationally. It isn’t a shortage of Americans willing to work — it’s a shortage of Americans willing to be treated like [bleep].
On the other hand, there is the case of the Market Basket grocery store chain where the employees went on strike to *support* management in 2014, and probably will be doing it again. You can find competent, loyal employees if you have a reputation for treating them decently. And while Market Basket will sometimes have signs up advertising for eclectic positions (e.g. refrigeration technician), it doesn’t have the table with job applications as you walk in, like its competitors do.
Let’s look at how bad unpaid internships are being abused today — and not just in DC although that is a story in itself. This won’t be training to help get a promotion, it will instead be a prerequisite for a promotion with a dozen employees working off the clock in hopes of getting the one promotion. (LL Bean won’t even have to pay minimum wage anymore…)
And if you think this will be “voluntary”, it well may be — if you don’t mind having games played with your schedule. Remember that doctor’s appointment you made five months ago — so sorry, you’re working that day. Or you’re working until midnight next Saturday, and then coming in at 6 AM on Sunday morning, sucks to be you.
Don’t get me going about the H-1b visas….
This truly is the worst idea since the “punishment for a crime” exception to the ban on slavery. An underclass of people working without pay in pursuit of jobs they are statistically unlikely to obtain — that would be Karl Marx’s dream.
Forget Mayor of New York, something like this could put Zohran Mamdani in the White House, even if it would take a Constitutional Amendment…
While editing this essay, I couldn’t help but see H.R. 2262 as little more than a tactic for employers to justify further exploiting their workers. It strains belief to imagine companies adopting this bill in a way that genuinely benefits employees. How does refusing to compensate people for training help them in any way? Far more likely, employers will seize it as another excuse to wring free labor from workers who are already underpaid.
You’re right to point out that “voluntary” training is rarely voluntary in practice. Anyone who has spent time in a corporate setting knows how quickly “optional” programs become unwritten requirements if you want a promotion—or even just to keep your job. If this bill passes, many workers will find themselves in the absurd position of working extra hours, off the clock, for the vague promise of advancement that most will never receive.
As for colleges and universities: for decades they have held a near-monopoly on credentialing. Employers have long relied on higher ed to “certify” qualifications, whether or not a degree truly prepared someone for the work. This doesn’t mean higher education should be reduced to vocational training—but since so many already treat it as a mere workforce pipeline, the institutions have profited handsomely from the arrangement while failing to deliver. If employers begin stepping into that role, offering so-called transferable skills, the public may see that colleges are not the sole—or even the best—mechanism for preparing people for work.
So yes, the bill is deeply flawed as labor policy. But it also signal that employers increasingly believe their companies can do a better job at teaching.