Credit Checks for Employers – No
I should qualify this slightly by saying that a background check is fine and honestly truly necessary. It's the credit check where I have to draw the line. Good credit should not be necessary to be able to get a job. The problem is that people with bad credit are usually not bad people. They are people who have hit upon rough times. By denying them a job, you also deny them the opportunity to get their credit back on track. This makes an already bad situation worse. If I had to choose between paying for my children to eat, and paying my overdue cable bill, guess who wins. My children do. This is the way things are, and should not deter me from getting a decent job.
On the other hand, I think that criminal background checks are absolutely necessary. If you do this, however, the offense needs to be looked at individually as to the severity and whether or not it would prevent the person from performing the job that they are hired to perform. Certain kinds of crimes should not deter people from being able to get jobs. For example, a person who has served jailtime because of non-payment of child support, should actually be fine to hire. Again, we are falling into the payment issue. A person who does not have the funds to pay their financial obligations should not be punished by preventing them from earning the means to pay their obligations. This is ludicrous, not to mention counterproductive.
If a person has served jail time for robbing a bank and wants to work in a bank, this is not a good thing. If a chronic shoplifter wants to work in your store, this could present a problem as well. These are the kinds of things you do have to be careful of. The problem comes when, increasingly, criminals and people with bad credit get lumped into the same category. Falling behind in your financial obligations is not a criminal act, in spite of the fact that it is treated as such, more and more often. The fact is, that very few people fall behind because they want to. Nobody wants the harassing calls from creditors, or in the case of child support having the DA breathing down their necks threatening them with jail time. These people should not be penalized further by being unable to obtain employment because their credit went bad.
