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August 07, 2009
NYT on credit checks by employers
Last week we participated in a press conference to introduce federal legislation banning the use of credit reports by most employers; today the New York Times has a page one story on Another Hurdle for the Jobless: Credit Inquiries. The story reports on several states that have restricted the practice (Washington State and Hawaii) and several where it has been under consideration (Michigan and Ohio, with California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoing a similar proposal). Opposition to use of credit reports is for several reasons: what relationship is there between credit reports and job performance? credit reports are full of mistakes and people shouldn't be denied jobs, especially in a depressed market, due to mistakes, clearing the mistakes is an Orwellian nightmare that can take months, many of the mistakes are due to identity theft, which is even harder to clean up, and as pointed out in the story, credit checks could be being used as a proxy for illegal discrimination. Excerpt from the New York Times:
“How do you get out from under it?” asked Matthew W. Finkin, a law professor at the University of Illinois, who fears that the unemployed and debt-ridden could form a luckless class. “You can’t re-establish your credit if you can’t get a job, and you can’t get a job if you’ve got bad credit.”
Others say that the credit check can be used to provide cover for discriminatory practices.
Posted by Ed Mierzwinski at August 7, 2009 08:04 AM
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