Another Hurdle for the Jobless: Credit Inquiries

by Jonathan D. Glater | Tuesday, August 11, 2009

provided by

J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times

Kevin Palmer, 49, of Santa Ana, Calif., lost a job offer after a credit check revealed a bankruptcy.

Digging out of debt keeps getting harder for
the unemployed as more companies use detailed credit checks to screen
job prospects.

Out of work since December, Juan Ochoa was
delighted when a staffing firm recently responded to his posting on
Hotjobs.com with an opening for a data entry clerk. Before he could do
much more, though, the firm checked his credit history.

The interest vanished. There were too many collections claims against him, the firm said.

"I
never knew that nowadays they were going to start pulling credit checks
on you even before you go for an interview," said Mr. Ochoa, 46, who
lost his job in December tracking inventory at a mining company in
Santa Fe Springs, Calif. "Why would they need to pull a credit report?
They'd need something like that if you were applying at a bank."

Once
reserved for government jobs or payroll positions that could involve
significant sums of money, credit checks are now fast, cheap and used
for all manner of work. Employers, often winnowing a big pool of job
applicants in days of nearly 10 percent unemployment, view the credit
check as a valuable tool for assessing someone's judgment.

But
job counselors worry that the practice of shunning those with poor
credit may be unfair and trap the unemployed -- who may be battling
foreclosure, living off credit cards and confronting personal
bankruptcy -- in a financial death spiral: the worse their debts, the
harder it is to get a job to pay them off.

"How
do you get out from under it?" asked Matthew W. Finkin, a law professor
at the University of Illinois, who fears that the unemployed and
debt-ridden could form a luckless class. "You can't re-establish your
credit if you can't get a job, and you can't get a job if you've got
bad credit."

Others say that the credit check can be used to
provide cover for discriminatory practices. Responding to complaints
from constituents, lawmakers in a few states have recently proposed
legislation that would restrict employers' use of credit checks. While
some measures languish, Hawaii has just imposed new restraints.

Business
executives say that they have an obligation to be diligent and to
protect themselves from employees who may be unreliable, unwise or too
susceptible to temptation to steal, and that credit checks are a help.

"If
I see too many negative things coming up on a credit check, it's one of
those things that raises a flag with me," said Anita Orozco, director
of human resources at Sonneborn, a petrochemical company based in
Mahwah, N.J. She added that while bad credit alone would not be a
reason to deny someone a job, it might reveal poor judgment.

"If you see a history of bad decision-making, you don't want that decision-making overflowing into your organization," she said.

More than 40 percent of employers use credit checks at least sometimes, according to a 2004 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, up from 25 percent in 1998. The share has almost certainly risen today, say career counselors.

"It
has been an ongoing and increasing issue," said Mollie de Rojas,
district coordinator for the local operations of the Ohio Department of
Job and Family Services.

Credit counselors, worker advocates and the unemployed contend that a credit check is not always relevant to hiring decisions.

"There's
no relationship between being a personal trainer making $12 an hour"
and having a good credit history, said Janet L. Newcomb, a career
counselor in Huntington Beach, Calif. "People are being turned down for
jobs on the basis of things that really have nothing to do with
qualifications."

That is the complaint of Kevin Palmer, 49, who
for months lived at the same homeless shelter in Santa Ana, Calif., as
Mr. Ochoa. After an interview that seemed to go well one day in June at
a property management company, a manager walked him around the office
the next day, introduced him to other employees and showed him an
available desk.

A credit check later, the offer vanished.

It
was "a glorified clerk's job, taking homeowners' complaints," Mr.
Palmer said of the opportunity, which paid about $39,000 and could have
gotten him back on his feet after losing his condominium to foreclosure
and filing for bankruptcy.

Last month, he says he found a job at
a property management company in San Francisco -- a company that did
not run a credit check on him.

It is generally legal to run
credit checks on job applicants, but some states have restrictions. In
Washington, which has perhaps the most stringent requirement, a
candidate's credit history must be substantially related to the job
under a law that took effect in 2007.

Last month, lawmakers in
Hawaii approved a measure that generally allows an employer to review a
credit history only after making an offer and requires the credit check
to be "directly related" to job qualifications.

In California,
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a similar law. (New York law requires
a background check's findings to be related to the job, but it
addresses criminal records and does not mention credit checks.)

Lawmakers in Michigan and Ohio have proposed barring employers from using credit history in making employment decisions.

"In
my opinion, it's discrimination," said Representative Jon Switalski,
the Democrat who proposed legislation in Michigan. "If you miss a few
payments or you have medical debt, your skills as a pipefitter or an
electrician don't diminish."

Courts have not been sympathetic to
claims that discrimination is being cloaked in credit checks, said
Angela Onwuachi-Willig, a law professor at the University of Iowa. "At
what point does the fact that someone lives in a particular
neighborhood or someone has a bad credit score become a way of
eliminating people for illegal grounds?" she asked rhetorically.
"Basically, the courts don't protect against proxy discrimination."

Stuart
J. Ishimaru, the acting chairman of the federal Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission, said the commission would probably issue
guidance on the proper use of credit checks. Such guidance, though
nonbinding, could offer some reassurance against lawsuits to employers
who comply.

"It's something that intrigues us and worries us,"
Mr. Ishimaru said, adding that some job-related tests had led to
discrimination claims in the past. "The question is, why do you use it?
How is this a good screening device?"

Federal law requires
employers to get the consent of job applicants before running credit
checks, said Pamela Q. Devata, a lawyer in the Chicago office of
Seyfarth Shaw.

And if they are considering denying someone a job
based on a check, she said, "they have to notify the applicant." That
is intended to give someone a chance to explain circumstances or spot
erroneous information.

When the job market improves and fewer
people are fighting for slots, credit histories may become less
important, said Michael C. Lazarchick, a career counselor in
Pleasantville, N.J. "But these are lean and mean times."