Court Opinion

ID: 9687338
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:25:33.728149+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:25.217367
License: Public Domain

Young, J.
I respectfully dissent from what I believe to be the majority’s unpersuasive effort to fit the parties’ tuition contract into the prohibition contained in MCL 408.478(1); MSA 17.277(8)(1).1 Because the terms of the tuition contract clearly do not resemble a “fee, gift, tip, gratuity, or other remuneration or consideration,” I would hold that the contract does not violate subsection 8(1) and would affirm the Court of Appeals decision on this basis.
*245What I find most troubling about the majority’s analysis is its use of the statutory construction principle of ejusdem generis. I think that the majority’s approach represents the exact opposite of that principle.2 As a condition of employment, plaintiff required defendant to agree either to work for six years or to pay for some part of the cost of the training that was provided to him. The majority’s conclusion, that this independent agreement is a “consideration” in the nature of a fee, gift, tip, or gratuity, does not square with a natural reading of these more specific, but ordinary, statutory terms.
Fees, gifts, tips, and gratuities all connote something given to an employer for which the employee, other than the job itself, gets nothing in return. Thus, I agree with the majority that the statute is designed to “prevent kickbacks or payments of any kind to an employer in return for employment or its continuation.” Ante at 241. Stated otherwise, the statute plainly seeks to prevent employers from selling jobs by extracting things of value from an employee as a condition of employment or continued employment. The parties’ tuition contract is far different and is not in any ordinary sense a gift. In return for his agreement to the terms of the tuition contract, defendant, a nineteen-year-old high school graduate, received something very valuable separate and apart from a job: extensive training in appliance repair that ena*246bled him to advance from making $7 an hour as an apprentice to some $50,000 a year as an appliance repair journeyman two and a half years later.3 Thus, in my view, whether plaintiff also received a benefit— defendant’s commitment either to work for six years or pay for his training — is irrelevant because this commitment was not in the nature of a fee, gift, tip, or gratuity.
The majority rejects this logic on the ground that it would make “an absurdity of the statute,” make the statute “ineffectual in accomplishing the employee protection intended,” and otherwise “thwart the statute’s operation.” Ante at 243, 244, n 8. However, we rejected such methods of statutory construction in People v McIntire, 461 Mich 147, 156, n 8; 599 NW2d 102 (1999). Once the majority’s reliance on what I believe is an unexpressed legislative intent is cast aside, it becomes obvious that the parties’ agreement does not even remotely resemble a fee, gift, tip, or gratuity given in exchange for the privilege of employment. Rather, it is an agreement designed merely to *247ensure that an employer’s costs will be at least partially offset in the event that an employee who has been heavily subsidized in his training leaves such employment before those subsidies can be fully amortized.
In sum, because I read the statute to preclude only gift-like boons to an employer and not agreements of the kind at issue here, I dissent.
Corrigan, J., concurred with Young, J.

 Subsection 8(1) provides:
An employer, agent or representative of an employer, or other person having authority from the employer to hire, employ, or direct the services of other persons in the employment of the employer shall not demand or receive, directly or indirectly from an employee, a fee, gift, tip, gratuity, or other remuneration or consideration, as a condition of employment or continuation of employment.

 The majority observes that “consideration” has a “unique meaning under the law” (although it never explains why that fact is relevant to the construction of this statute). Ante at 241. As further explained below, a proper application of ejusdem generis to the language of subsection 8(1) instructs that “consideration” be construed to include only those things of the same kind, class, character, or nature as fees, gifts, tips, and gratuities.

 In fact, defendant’s training enabled him to obtain Environmental Protection Agency certification to work with refrigerants. The majority suggests that, under my construction, “[t]he slightest return from the employer (perhaps even the legendary peppercorn) would take the employee out of the protection of the act” because “such a minimal benefit running to the employee could be found in all employment arrangements.” Ante at 243, 244, n 8.1 agree with the majority that, if the training provided to an employee has no value, then it might indeed constitute a “fee, gift, tip, gratuity, or other remuneration or consideration.” Such agreements may very well violate subsection 8(1). However, we are not concerned here with an agreement in which the benefit to the employee is de minimis or otherwise lacking value. The fact remains that this defendant received training in appliance repair that enabled him to triple his income in less than three years. The majority relies on hypothetical scenarios not before the Court to support its conclusion. I confine my analysis to the facts of this case and conclude that defendant here received a real benefit as amply demonstrated by his $50,000 salary.