Credit Checks Should Absolutely Be Barred in Employment

because, after all, how is one EVER to get his or her financial life in order if he or she cannot get a job because of these stupid screening tactics?

Somebody is making a killing off of these credit checks, and I believe that is the REAL reason so many outfits are doing them.

Since there is NO evidence at all people with weak or lousy credit are worse employees than those with "perfect" ratings, I hope Rep Cohen's proposed legislation becomes law.

More:

At the federal level, Representative Steve Cohen, Democrat of Tennessee, is pursuing his own legislation that would prohibit employers nationwide from using credit checks to discriminate in hiring.

Supporters of such laws say they are necessary because an increasing number of employers are doing credit checks even though there is no proof that bad credit is a marker of risky employees.

Furthermore, they say the practice unfairly tars the huge pool of people whose credit was damaged by layoffs, medical bills or other factors beyond their control. They also say it disproportionately screens out minorities.

“Bernie Madoff had a pretty good credit score,” said Matthew Lesser, a Connecticut state representative who introduced a bill early last year that would have limited employers’ use of credit reports.

“And yet there is this consistent message that if you have a bad credit score, there is something wrong with you.”

Banning Credit Checks for the Vast Majority of Jobs

is a great idea. There is simply no excuse for employers to do this for most workers.

Besides, how is one ever to get out of financial problems if he or she cannot get a job based on past financial problems?

Snip:

It's hard enough to find a job in this economy, and now some people are facing another hurdle: Potential employers are holding their credit histories against them.

Sixty percent of employers recently surveyed by the Society for Human Resources Management said they run credit checks on at least some job applicants, compared with 42 percent in a somewhat similar survey in 2006.

Employers say such checks give them valuable information about an applicant's honesty and sense of responsibility. But lawmakers in at least 16 states from South Carolina to Oregon have proposed outlawing most credit checks, saying the practice traps people in debt because their past financial problems prevent them from finding work.

Wisconsin state Rep. Kim Hixson drafted a bill in his state shortly after hearing from Terry Becker, an auto mechanic who struggled to find work.

Becker said it all started with medical bills that piled up when his now 10-year-old son began having seizures as a toddler. In the first year alone, Becker ran up $25,000 in medical debt.

Over 4 1/2 months, he was turned down for at least eight positions for which he had authorized the employer to conduct a credit check, Becker said. He said one potential employer told him, "If your credit is bad, then you'll steal from me."

Indeed, how the hell can anybody get out of a financial hole without a job, unless of course, a person wins the lottery.

The Booming Economy

Jobless benefit rolls have hit an all-time high:

The Labor Department reported that, for the second week in a row, more than 600,000 US workers filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week, bringing the total number of continuing claims—those drawn by workers collecting benefits for more than one week—to a record high of 4,810,000. Continuing claims have risen by more than 2 million over the past year, reaching the highest level since the government began keeping track in 1967.

Initial claims for jobless benefits totaled 623,000, slightly less than the upwardly revised figure of 631,000 for the previous week. The latest weekly figure was significantly higher than analysts’ expectations of 610,000 claims. New jobless claims have nearly doubled from a year ago.

The four-week average of claims jumped 24,000 to 607,500, the highest total since November 1982, when the US was in its most severe recession since the 1930s.

An additional 1.5 million people are receiving benefits under an extended unemployment compensation program approved by Congress last year, bringing the total number of jobless pay recipients to 6.3 million.

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It's a vicious circle: Before you can get many jobs, especially those in the finance industry, they require a credit check, and of course if you have had financial problems, your credit is down the tubes. But if you want to get out of debt, you need a job, and yet employers can deny you the right to be employed and get out of it.

It's truly sick and twisted, just like questions asking whether or not you have ever been fired from a job, but in the latter case, applicants do not have to disclose it and there is no way for employers to find out without the previous employer risking a major civil rights/wrong termination lawsuit. But with credit checks, it's very easy for employers to do.

The real reason they do these checks is simply to screen applicants out. It has NOTHING to do with "security."

It should be made illegal for companies to do credit checks; it is supposedly illegal to discriminate against workers because they have filed for bankruptcy. The law needs to be expanded to ban credit checks.
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