Posted on 12/18/2013 12:06:42 PM PST by ConservativeStatement
WASHINGTON — Hank Ronan knew he would get the job. He had sailed through three rounds of interviews and hit it off with the doctors at the diagnostic center in Annandale, Va., where he had applied to be a driver for $11 an hour.
Shuttling patients to appointments was a world away from his 20 years as a software engineer, but it was the best that Ronan could find after being laid off in 2011. He was eager to get back to work and granted the doctor’s office permission to run a credit check. Ronan never heard back, he said Tuesday in an interview.
(Excerpt) Read more at pottsmerc.com ...
I hope you are lucky enough to never have a major medical bill which your insurance refuses to cover or a serious storm which damages your home and insurance refuses to cover. I also hope your credit report is 100% accurate. Most of us mere mortals don’t have such luck.
Neither is there any proof of it. And I know a lot of folks in that boat the last few years. You can’t credibly say people should be responsible and pay their debts, while making it impossible for them to do so.
I think this is something reasonable people can disagree on. I think my reasons for my opinion are sound. I do not think this needs to be done at the Federal level but I would support it at the state level with certain exceptions. I don’t really see how punishing people and knocking them out of the running for a job is a good thing considering how many people have been harmed by Obama’s economic policies. I am standing up for the individual here as a potential employee as much as others are standing up for employers. Supporting the individual is a conservative value.
I’ve had plenty of hard times and been flat broke and out of work, but I always paid my bills on time somehow.
I would cut out everything to pay my bills, and live off the land, whatever it takes.
A reasonable person can look at a credit report and determine if the person simply fell on hard luck, or has a long history of being a habitual deadbeat. But, asking for someone to be "reasonable" might be asking too much.
“Credit checks are way too accurate of a proxy for a “character check”.”
Have you seen this Obama economy?!!!...many good honorable people have been seriously harmed by it and have had their credit destroyed. Shame on you sir!
“I also hope your credit report is 100% accurate. Most of us mere mortals don’t have such luck.”
Well, mine isn’t accurate now that you mention it.
I was switching to a new credit card with a lower interest rate and called my bank.
She told be they have a card based on a a point above prime, but it takes a high credit score.
Long story short, she called back and said no problem my credit score was 820 something.
I ask why it wasn’t 840, but she said not to worry because it was higher than any she had ever seen.
Republican senators push for pre-employment credit checks on presidential candidates from Hawaii, Chicago, Harvard, Columbia, Occidental, Jakarta and Kenya.
Yes it does. Mind you I am not referring to what happens after a person is hired and what probationary conditions might be placed upon a new employee such as going through a background check which might include a credit report. I am referring to whether an employer should have the right to see your credit report as part of the process of pre screening applications. That is what I have a problem with and not with any contract a new hire and an employer might arrive at. This also means the employee can take action to correct any errors in advance of the check or explain any negative findings.
The employer can certainly make known that a check will be required as part of the condition of probation and the employee can decline to go any further in the process.
The country has done extremely well without the use of credit checks in deciding who to hire at until the last 10 years or so. Come to think of it, the last 10 years the economy has been rather chaotic...is the current business psychology that also encompasses the use of credit checks on candidates for hire part of the problem?
I have seen way too many bookkeepers and trusted employees steal their employers blind for this to make sense. I view this as just one more very big “straw” to break the camel’s back. the evil SOBs are trying to MAKE SMALL BUSINESS EXTINCT, people. Don’t you get it??????
I once applied for a position at a company, went through the interview process and was hired. I received my giant stack of paperwork from HR and just scratched my head at much of the information they wanted. One thing, of course, was permission to check my personal credit history. It was the first time I had ever encountered such a request from an employer.
I told the nice HR lady I was no longer interested in the position and left.
The next day I received a call from the company wanting to know if I would change my mind as I was the most qualified candidate they had interviewed.
I told them my “personal” finances are just what the name implies: personal. I then told her I was applying for a job, not a loan.
I have no idea what my credit score would look like other than being a blank page but it is probably considered “bad.” I have no credit cards or debt of any kind and haven’t had any for decades.
No hard feelings with the company, though. They made what I considered unreasonable demands and I simply found employment elsewhere under terms I found to be more to my liking: I will exchange my labor for an agreed upon wage. Anything else is complete BS that I don’t care to put up with.
Well, they run credit checks on everyone now for anything above the burger-flipper level.
Note also the WaPo writer's use of the medical practice as the convenient "whipping boy" employer in the scenario. That's no surprise, either.
From a logical and libertarian perspective, if an applicant for employment at a private entity is in debt to an unrelated party or parties, why should the potential employer need to know about it unless the potential employer intends to assume a creditor relationship with the prospective employee?
The guy who could have been denied a job because of a bad credit rating should have denied consent to the prospective employer to research his credit history, and told the prospective employer that it's irrelevant to his capability of performing the job for which he was applying.
The previous credit problems between the prospective employee and his creditors could and should be resolved outside the prospective employer-employee relationship, and without any government meddling beside civil court proceedings if necessary.
Just to be clear, I did not mean to say I support anything Elizabeth Warren proposes.
What’s next? Banning drug tests, criminal background check, past employment history, education history? We already know you can wear a dress to work if you’re a guy. Remember, anything that doesn’t produce equal outcomes for minorities must be inherently, institutionally racist. So all standards need to be dropped that might disproportionally affect minorities.
I have seen way too many bookkeepers and trusted employees steal their employers blind for this to make sense. I view this as just one more very big “straw” to break the camel’s back. the evil SOBs are trying to MAKE SMALL BUSINESS EXTINCT, people. Don’t you get it??????
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These folks probably have perfect credit scores. They can afford to accumulate and pay massive amounts of debt and have picture perfect credit reports because they steal their employers blind...
The poor schmuck who works hard and tries to get by as best he can while falling a bit behind on his bills because of a child’s medical condition, divorce, etc. do not enter into the equations used to determine those tidy little scores on a piece of paper.
Big business is, in many ways, a mirror of society. People have become immune to the government acting in the role of big brother and now are willing to accept employers who do the same.
What’s next? An employer telling me I can’t smoke a cigar when I am off work at home? Oh, that’s right. That is the newest big brother craze among employers.
Ronan’s experience is at the heart of legislation introduced Tuesday by a group of Senate Democrats seeking to bar companies from using credit checks to weed out job applicants
I worked in HR for a major Tier 1 supplier to the auto industry for almost 35 years. The first 25 were at our manufacturing plant in Detroit and the last 9 at our corporate office in Troy.
Background "credit checks" for our manufacturing jobs were never a part of our hiring practices for several reasons. First being it serves no purpose, secondly, the cost involved and lastly, the applicant flow. Each hourly employee hired is subjected to a probationary period and can be terminated for any disciplinary violation. One's credit history would never even be considered.
To clarify my statements above, there is no way a minimum wage or slightly higher job applicant would EVER be subjected to a background credit check.
Keep in mind here, this guy was the posterboy for the Democrats in the push for this legislation. So what do we know about Democrats and their poster children that they constantly parade before the House and Senate?
As for this guy claiming that his doctor requested the background check, that is so full of crap that I can't believe the news source actually printed it without outing it as a lie!
Here is a typical cycle of events for a company that is hiring an hourly employee:
1. Application review
2. Selection of applicants for interview
3. Interviewing of selected applicants
4. Potential candidates selected and instructed to report to a company sponsored clinic for physical and drug screening at the cost of the company.
5. Final selection of applicant from those who passed the drug screening.
6. Final interview and most importantly, THE OFFER OF A JOB.
If I'm going to believe any part of the DEMOCRAT SENATE's posterboy, it will be that he did report for a physical. But I'm not buying his story that the doctor requested permission for a background credit check......not today and not tomorrow!
I suspect that the DEMOCRAT SENATE posterboy failed the required drug test and thus was not given any more consideration for the job..........
Which could also explain why he was not hired for a job with the state sponsored alcohol exchange...........
The decision to use or not use a credit check should be the business, not the government.
Please be more specific, what kind of jobs are you talking about?
And what is your experience with these types of hiring practices?
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