BreAnn Scally quit her job at PetSmart in September of 2021. She had been bathing and grooming dogs at the retail chains Salinas, California, store for seven months, and she struggled to get by in such a pricey area on $15 per hour. She left in search of better pay and less stress.

But PetSmart wasnt done with Scally. The following January, she was doing one of her regular credit checks through Experian when she saw her new debt: She owed $5,000 for the cost of her training through PetSmarts grooming academy, as well as another $500 for the tools shed received for the job. PetSmart was apparently seeking to collect because Scally had left less than a year into a 24-month minimum tenure listed in the contract shed signed.

After years of working to clean up her credit, Scally says her score dropped from the high 600s to the low 600s, enough to complicate signing a new apartment lease. She didnt know where she would find the money to pay the collection agency, IC System.

I wasnt the best when it came to finances when I was younger, said Scally, 24. I had debt to my name that I was paying off. I had already paid off a lot of it and was doing well. Then this happened.

Scally is the lead plaintiff in a new proposed class-action lawsuit filed against PetSmart last week, alleging that the companys training program is little more than a scheme to lock workers into lower-wage positions for an extended period. Worker and consumer advocates sometimes call these training repayment agreement provisions, or TRAPs, which require workers to foot the bill for training if they leave an employer before a specified time.

Such agreements function a lot like noncompete clauses, which prevent workers from taking jobs at competing companies for a certain period. Training repayment provisions similarly compel workers to stay put, but through the threat of debt. Critics of these arrangements say they reduce worker bargaining power and hold wages down by precluding employees from taking their labor to the highest bidder in a free market.

PetSmart declined a request for an interview about the companys grooming academy and its repayment requirements, but defended the system in a statement to HuffPost, saying other programs in the pet grooming industry can run up to $10,000. The company asserted that its average pet groomer has been with the company for 12 years.

Grooming Academy is a robust, multi-week program combining classroom and hands-on training, and is critical to maintaining our industry-leading standards, the company said through a spokesperson. Academy-trained stylists receive tools and equipment and 800 hours of hands-on instruction, more than any other program, and work with at least 200 dogs of all breeds and sizes.

Training repayment provisions have been around for years, and its impossible to know how many U.S. workers are now subject to them. But a new report from the nonprofit Student Borrower Protection Center shows how they appear to have proliferated at health care facilities and trucking companies in particular, with employers using them to lock workers in for minimum tenures. In 2020, the Dallas Morning News reported that a Texas hospital was suing more than 20 nurses who left before working a full year.

Jonathan Harris, an associate professor at Loyola Marymount Universitys Loyola Law School, says some repayment arrangements rightfully draw comparison to debt peonage and indentured servitude. The contracts can make sense in certain fields, he said, if they provide genuine training that has a value on the open market, accompanied by a degree or widely accepted credential, with a repayment cost tied to actual training expenses.