>> Ive got mixed feeling on this one.
No mixed feelings here. Employment should be a completely voluntary, free market decision, period.
Employers should (if they dare) be free to ask ANY QUESTION they please, and hire and fire on ANY basis whatsoever — including race — or on no basis at all. They should pay whatever amount they can hire talent at — no minimum wage whatsoever.
Conversely, employees should be free — as they are now — to ask any question of their potential employer, and to make their job acceptance decision on any criteria they wish, or no criteria at all. As they are now.
Please observe that right now the vetting process is tilted in favor of employees, who unlike employers can ask ANYTHING and make their decision on ANY BASIS THEY CHOOSE.
As to your comment on ex-cons loading baggage — you’re right, there’s no inherent reason why an ex con ought to be automatically excluded from that job, or any other.
Let the market decide.
Note that if hiring decisions were freed of all the regulations they’re encumbered with, more people would be hired everywhere — old white guys, blacks, teens, EVERYONE would benefit. The economy would grow. And when it did grow, employment would increase, wages would have to increase, and more ex-cons (and black teenagers) would be hired — out of market NECESSITY.
What’s more, as cliche as it sounds, people ARE any business’s most precious asset. A company that regularly abused its human resouces relative to its competitors would be at a disadvantage in the marketplace, and eventually go out of business. Punished by the market, not by the government.