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City Council Will Likely Ban Practice Of Running Credit Checks On Job Applicants
By
Lauren Evans
Published Apr 13, 2015
Modified Apr 16, 2015
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By
Lauren Evans
Published Apr 13, 2015
Modified Apr 16, 2015
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New York is poised to become one of a handful of places in which it's illegal for employers to review job-seekers' credit history, pending a vote in the City Council today.
If passed, the bill would not only end the practice of running credit checks on prospective employees, it would also prohibit employers from asking about applicants' credit scores.
“There’s just no demonstrated correlation between credit history and job performance, or the likelihood to commit fraud or theft,” the bill's sponsor, City Councilman Brad Lander, told the Daily News.
Moreover, requiring good credit to be considered for a job presents a vicious Catch-22. As Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union told the Times in January: “People want to pay off loans, but because of their troubles, they can’t even get a job.”
A 2013 Demos report on the use of employment credit checks found that employers posting on Craigslist ran credit checks for jobs at all sorts of levels: maintenance work, telephone tech support, office assistants, delivery drivers, insurance salespeople, home care aides, stockroom supervisors and frozen yogurt servers.
The New York Public Interest Research Group has endorsed the final version of the bill, issuing a statement saying that "New York City’s credit checks bill does not fall victim to the broad exemptions or loopholes that have undermined efforts to ban employment credit checks elsewhere." The exemptions that have been included will be subject to review by the City’s Commission on Human Rights.
YPRG's Armando Chapelliquen says, "This is the strongest bill in the country, without a doubt, and the Commission on Human Rights’ report may give us an opportunity to make the bill’s protections even better down the road."
Mayor de Blasio has yet to confirm whether he will support the bill.
"Credit discrimination is oftentimes an unnecessary obstacle to New Yorkers getting jobs, and we will continue to work with the City Council to help put more New Yorkers on pathways to jobs,” the mayor's Deputy Press Secretary, Ishanee Parikh, said in a statement.
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brad lander
City Council
credit checks
employment
Lauren Evans
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