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Elizabeth Warren: Stop Employers From Conducting Credit Checks

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Atomic Playboy said:
Why would an employer need to conduct a credit check?
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Probably industry specific. E.g., accounting and other money handling jobs present opportunities for money laundering, fraud, etc. Poor credit could be indicative that a potential new hire may have more motivation to engage in those illegal practices.
 
TerryMathews said:
Poor credit does not track with income level, no matter how much you want it to.
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People who don't or haven't used credit have poor scores. Lots of lenders also don't report to the credit agencies, like payday loan & rent to own guys, landlords, others as well. Working class people can pay all their bills on time forever & not have good credit.

The current economic situation, the lesser depression, put a lot of otherwise solvent families on the skids, as well. Living the dream, up to their eyeballs in debt, making their payments just fine until they suffer job loss & extended unemployment. Luckier people sail right on through because their jobs didn't disappear.

Often times, it's just the luck of the draw.
 
Vic said:
Ok whoa here.. any one tasked with reviewing these credit reports should be sufficiently trained to be able to tell the difference between a hardship and financial mismanagement.
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Doesn't mean it works that way. HR depts are fundamentally lazy, often applying an arbitrary set of primary filters wrt hiring. When there are a lot more applicants than jobs, it just means they can be more arbitrary.
 
Jhhnn said:
People who don't or haven't used credit have poor scores.
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Wrong. They have no score, which is not the same thing in the credit world.

Jhhnn said:
The current economic situation, the lesser depression, put a lot of otherwise solvent families on the skids, as well. Living the dream, up to their eyeballs in debt, making their payments just fine until they suffer job loss & extended unemployment. Luckier people sail right on through because their jobs didn't disappear.

Often times, it's just the luck of the draw.
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Ok, but do you realize this also applies to the higher-end earners making $100k-$500k a year?

Contrary to your party doctrine, not everyone who makes good money gets a golden parachute.

Which again goes back to my point: POOR CREDIT DOES NOT TRACK ON INCOME LEVELS. There are as many "rich" people with poor credit as there are "poor" people with good credit.
 
BUnit1701 said:
So that before you hire a person into a sensitive position, you can know if they are in a financial situation likely to cause them to steal from your business. Just like they run a credit check when you apply for a security clearance.
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EVERYONE is in a financial position to steal from your business. Everyone.

Whether they do it or not is a personal choice and has no bearing on what their credit history looks like.

CRIMINAL background check, I'm all for. Credit? Get the fuck out of my business.
 
TerryMathews said:
Wrong. They have no score, which is not the same thing in the credit world.



Ok, but do you realize this also applies to the higher-end earners making $100k-$500k a year?

Contrary to your party doctrine, not everyone who makes good money gets a golden parachute.

Which again goes back to my point: POOR CREDIT DOES NOT TRACK ON INCOME LEVELS. There are as many "rich" people with poor credit as there are "poor" people with good credit.
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Oh, please. Of course I realize that. OTOH, high earners have better tools & resources to overcome financial adversity. Even they can end up badly jammed & pounded to the bottom of the heap if they're not earning for a long enough period of time.

Having credit problems off & on is just part of life for many people until they're unemployed. Then it turns into a double whammy. Can't pay the bills because you don't have a job, and you can't get a job because you don't pay the bills.
 
Jhhnn said:
Oh, please. Of course I realize that. OTOH, high earners have better tools & resources to overcome financial adversity. Even they can end up badly jammed & pounded to the bottom of the heap if they're not earning for a long enough period of time.

Having credit problems off & on is just part of life for many people until they're unemployed. Then it turns into a double whammy. Can't pay the bills because you don't have a job, and you can't get a job because you don't pay the bills.
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So then you clearly acknowledge that this issue cannot be discrimination against the poor.

Glad you joined reality. Welcome, we have cookies.
 
senseamp said:
What if the business wants to search employee's house?
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Some of them already want to search your private life on Facebook.

10 year from now, employers will want to know how big your penis is and how many people you've slept with in the past year.
 
TerryMathews said:
So then you clearly acknowledge that this issue cannot be discrimination against the poor.

Glad you joined reality. Welcome, we have cookies.
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Hardly. It discriminates against the losers that the system creates in a random fashion. This lesser depression should have taught us about that. Regular people are subject to forces beyond our control. Sometimes it's just the luck of the draw. Shit happens, like losing the job you did well alongside a few million others. Then more shit happens, like a depressed job market that goes on forever.

Anybody unemployed for long in our society becomes poor after they use up their resources. Many median families are 2 paychecks away from financial disaster.

So if you go down, you better get up quick, otherwise they'll kick the shit out of you. Well, you and a helluva lot of other people, too.

Meanwhile, those of us fortunate enough to have remained employed sail on, try to find some justification other than fortune. I just say I've been lucky so far.
 
TerryMathews said:
This is an oxymoron.
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Not at all. I probably should have put it a little differently. For the purposes of working people, it might as well be random. If individual firms & whole industries suddenly go to hell in a handbasket, that really says nothing about the people negatively affected. They're just standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, and somebody had to be standing there.
 
Jhhnn said:
Not at all. I probably should have put it a little differently. For the purposes of working people, it might as well be random. If individual firms & whole industries suddenly go to hell in a handbasket, that really says nothing about the people negatively affected. They're just standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, and somebody had to be standing there.
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That is still not discrimination.
 
Incorruptible said:
A business wouldn't do that though and you're just fear mongering. If they want to search YOUR house then allow them.
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Why wouldn't they want to do that? You can learn a lot more about a prospective employee by rummaging through their stuff than by looking at their credit report.
 
senseamp said:
So it's OK for employer to search employee's house? Maybe it's interesting for me as an employer to know if you have guns or drugs in your house. If you don't like it don't work for me?
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You're just being idiotic. Most employers wouldn't do that.

Also a leech like you wouldn't be an employer.
 
TerryMathews said:
That is still not discrimination.
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Of course it is. We've already established that loss of employment in the current situation is not merit based. It has simply been imposed on a % of the workforce. It's also important to realize that the current situation is one of reduced churn in employment, as well. People who have jobs tend to keep 'em, and people who don't tend not to get new ones. That's not necessarily merit based, either. This concentrates the burdens of unemployment, particularly over time.

One of the marks left behind on those affected is often damaged credit. Just the way it is. Using credit scores as hiring criteria reinforces the permanent unemployment trend simply because an already employed job seeker is more likely to have good credit. Hire him away from another employer, who'll then do the same in finding a replacement. The employed & the unemployed switch places less frequently, with the unemployed taking a increasingly severe beatdown based on events beyond their control in the first place.

We have a system and headsets that make certain assumptions about unemployment, about who is affected & for how long. The system is built around rapid recovery in the labor market, around temporary assistance for the unlucky. It's not intended to create jobs- that's left to the private sector. The system was designed to deal with 2001, not 2008-

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