Something else to keep in mind as it seems to be an up and coming trend:
As others have said - a good way to keep the poor - poor.
Something else to keep in mind as it seems to be an up and coming trend:
As others have said - a good way to keep the poor - poor.





I had to get a background check and a credit check before I start nursing!
They do because they say if you have bad credit you might still somethingfrom the business and sell it to get your credit clean.
If you want the present to be differant from the past, study the past.
Baruch Spindza
It is what it is, not what you want it to become, that's important -- at least for now. Today, remember that things worth having are worth waiting for!
The Stars
Minds are like parachutes: They only function when open.
Thomas Dewar
Dont throw away the old bucket until you know whether the new one holds water.
Swedish Proverb




I know for the military if you have bad credit you dont get accepted. There was an incident where (an American,i believe?) was selling secrets to Russians for money because his debts were so hig. After that they do check your credit. Guess its not too bad of a thing, but it still sux.
Yea, it sucks for people who have their jobs outsourced over seas, get behind on their bills, and then can't get the next job because they are behind on their bills because their last job went to India.
I know a lot of people like this!





As the link says, this is about 'responsibility'. Like any small business owner can tell you, something has to be done to counteract the extension of today's 'entitlement' mentality into the job performance of newly hired young workers ... i.e. that they are 'entitled' to continued employment by simply showing up 4 out of 5 days a week. This position supported by the labor laws / settlement compensation / court precedent in many states btw. Thus many employers are essentially taking on a potential huge financial liability every time they hire a new employee - so they are now using every means at their disposal to attempt to sort out potential 'good' new employees from potential 'bad apple' new employees before they are actually hired.





Why is it tho, they refuse to furnish the applicant w/a copy of this, as well as the regular background checks? Why all the secrecy?
MANY MEN WANTED TO LAY ME DOWN, BUT FEW WANTED TO LIFT ME UP
-Eartha Kitt





^^^ most state laws simply do not require that a prospective employer state an official reason that a job applicant was not hired. All 'professional' job application forms contain a waiver provision where, by signing the application, the applicant grants their permission for the prospective employer to investigate and verify.
Originally Posted by whirlerz
Sometimes the employer doesn't even know. They give a private detective the applicant's name and they go dig up stuff. If the "stuff" is within the parameters set up in the deal between the PD and company - it turns into a nice simple YES/NO answer.
Mel, they may not have to give you the reasons why you weren't hired...but by law aren't you entitled to know what information they collected and get a copy of it? I mean, what if that info is WRONG?
I know with credit reports, you are entitled to a copy if you apply and are turned down (they have to furnish it to you upon request).
In the day and age of mass identity theft...shouldn't you be able to get a copy of the background check?
^^^
Ya would think.
But the credit system in the US is fucked up as it is.





I tend to think the "responsiblity" argument is alot of horseshit. Seems like the product of alot of marketing efforts by the credit reporting / investigating industry to me, and this "responsibility" stuff is how they're selling it.
It also pisses me off that this kind of crap only serves to perpetuate alot of undeserving people's problems. If they happen to lose a job to outsourcing or economic problems, they are pretty much gauranteed to have financial problems. Considering the vast majority of people in this country live paycheck to paycheck (and the systems we have in place encourage and reward that lifestyle), this practice only punishes alot of perfectly good people even more, unnecessarily. Also, IMO, it may even help to keep out perfectly good American workers while letting in more immigrant workers who, conveniently, lack the credit records to eliminate them, and are willing to work cheaper...





I'm guessing that there is some element of 'authorized personnel' data security involved, where the prospective employer and/or their current employees do not actually see the details of background checks. As Deo points out, this is usually carried out by third party PI's or specialized services which are properly licensed and bonded to be allowed access to criminal records, credit records etc., who in turn generates a Pass/Fail report on prospective job candidates based on pre-established employer criteria. I'm sure that you're entitled to a copy of the Pass/Fail report, but not entitled to more extensive data secured to 'authorized personnel' access by law enforcement.In the day and age of mass identity theft...shouldn't you be able to get a copy of the background check?





^Yes, well said, B!Originally Posted by Bridgette
MANY MEN WANTED TO LAY ME DOWN, BUT FEW WANTED TO LIFT ME UP
-Eartha Kitt




I think credit report and background checks are an essential part of the hiring process. It does show responsiblity when you consider the highest rate of fraud for any company is from employees. Just because a person looses their job does not mean it destroys their credit report. It takes continued irresponsiblity.
Companies are looking for major deliquencies and serve issues on a credit report. Who would you prefer to handle your information on your accounts?
What Vamp said can be true, that companies run background checks to avoid hiring a employee who is likely to commit fraud or steal from the company. It is also true that one's credit is due to continued responsibility. HOWEVER, I've seen many examples where people had their credit wrecked to things completely beyond their control. For example, I have a 20-yr-old friend who, at age 19, was in a car accident and taken to the hospital for treatment. He didn't have health insurance, and all he worked at was McDonalds at the time, so he wasn't able to pay the medical bills. These bills got sent to collections and have essentially ruined his credit before his credit even began.
There are many ways that people can have bad credit without irresponsibly racking up tons of credit cards or buying elaborate new cars. Medical collections are one of the most common examples. Another example is someone who doesn't make enough money to aptly afford apartment rent and still have savings left over. That person, upon sickness or job loss, could potentially fall behind in rent payments and could get a judgment rendered against him/her...but what is he/she supposed to do, forgo the apartment and become homeless because of it?? Shelter is a necessity, not a luxury. Another example is ID theft, or someone opening an unauthorized account in your name(cell phone, credit card, etc) and then defaulting on the payments. Yes it is possible to dispute credit items resulting from ID theft and hopefully get them removed from your credit, but in the mean time your credit sucks and an employer might need to run your credit for a job before the ID theft bullshit is resolved/cleaned up. You could say that one needs to have ample savings, all kinds of insurance, and other preventive measures to avoid things like medical collections...but some people do not make big enough wages to be able to afford to save a lot of money or purchase health insurance.
Making decent money doesn't guarantee that someone has good credit, but it definitely makes it a lot easier. Someone who makes money has the advantage of actually being able to afford rent and costs of living. Someone who makes money has the potential to build a decent savings cushion, whereas someone who makes only $200/week can barely scrape by living expenses. I've had my own experiences with this. Hells, the whole credit and costs-of-living issues are why I started dancing. I couldn't afford much in the way of costs of living when I was making $200/week and spending a significant part of my paycheck on transportation/commute, so I lived at home and then my family told me they didn't want me so I needed a way to make enough money to pay for my own rent. I also had student loans that needed to be paid back. The last thing I wanted was to default on my student loans, simply because I couldn't find a good enough job that allowed me to eat, commute, AND pay my loans. I'm lucky that I was able to get a job dancing, because if I hadn't, who knows how bad my credit would be today!





Or continued unemployment. Or inability to find a job that pays enough. Or medical issues. Or accidents/injuries. Or any number of other things that happen beyond someone's control that would render them unable to pay the bills. People just don't have the money to keep 6+ months worth of living expenses in savings, plus unexpected extra expenses. If anything happens, they are simply screwed and thanks to the recent popularity of pre-employment credit checks, they can often depend on CONTINUING to be screwed. When faced with paying for shelter / food or paying the loans/credit card, what do you think any rational person is going to do???Originally Posted by Vamp
How is someone supposed to pay their bills if they can't find a job? Or get out of whatever other hole they may have fallen into? If employers won't hire them because of credit problems, that only makes it worse. Get real. This is not just eliminating the "irresponsible" - it is hurting alot of good people too. Credit issues don't equate to thievery potential. Maybe employers should do more and better background checks - as in CRIMINAL checks. Better yet, maybe they should try paying folks a living wage
I think some people buy into the bullshit the system spews too much.





again I don't want to turn political, but at some point Americans have to acknowledge the fact that we are now in a global economy. This means that 'unskilled' American workers must indirectly compete for jobs with 'unskilled' workers in southeast Asia, and also means that 'skilled' American workers must indirectly compete for jobs with 'skilled' workers in India, eastern Europe etc. In today's global economy, the pay rates and accompanying lifestyle that had been the norm for the previous 3 post-ww2 generations of American workers simply no longer applies. Not facing up to this fact, and by indulging their feeling of 'entitlement' i.e. I'm a union auto worker like my father and grandfather so I should be able to afford all of the things that they could afford (even though doing so means running up huge debt levels, and demanding elevated pay levels which threatens future job security), Americans are placing themselves in this position of financial vulnerability.
One way or another, by new bankruptcy laws or by pre-employment credit checks or by tighter lending standards, this 'entitlement' mentality will wind up being eventually broken ... and Americans will be forced to 'live within their means' as the economy declines. All that can be hoped is that the 'pain and suffering' factor is somewhat less than the last time this occurred i.e. the 1930's. But where Americans should be 'waking up and smelling the coffee', cutting back on non-essential consumption, adjusting their lifestyles to become more in line with their true worth in a 'global' economy, and paying down their debts, most are still carrying on in blissful ignorance - which requires taking on ever greater levels of personal debt and ever greater levels of financial risk.
Yes Americans are starting to cut back on 'discretionary spending' i.e. buying fewer lap dances, but they're not facing the 'lifestyle changing' financial realities - that they need to sell the big house they could never really afford, they need to forego buying new car no matter what the neighbors will think, they need to buy off brand sneakers for their kid's birthday instead of $200 Reeboks, they need to move to a different city/state where the economy is better and the tax burden is lower etc. But psychologically speaking, facing up to 'lifestyle changing' financial realities is something that most Americans will simply not consider doing until they are absolutely forced to. Well, the pre-employment credit check, along with new bankruptcy laws, tighter lending standards, over the limit fees and penalty interest rates etc. will eventually force them to !
~
Last edited by Melonie; 09-16-2006 at 08:14 AM.
I agree with this...completely. People don't sell out their country because they have a lot of debt, they sell out their country because they are GREEDY. Because they have no patriotism. Telling someone who's fallen onto hard times that they are unemployable because they have late pays/collections on their credit report is stupid. In the day and age of divorce and extended families...money can get tight supporting 2 households...so if they have "poor" credit it means that they are irresponsible and don't deserve a job? As opposed to some immigrant who has no credit?Originally Posted by Bridgette
That makes no sense what so ever.
I see the points of Vamp and Melonie, but I do gotta agree with Bridgette and Venus Goddess. It is very angering that these preemployment credit checks will further hurt the people already suffering from unemployment or paychecks that pay less than standard costs of living. This is just one example of many things in this country that make it very very difficult for the lower class to get ahead.
There are other things that make it hard for the poor to get ahead, too. I'm sure you're all aware that most landlords perform credit checks, too. I understand that landlords do not want to risk losing money by signing a lease for a tenant who is likely to stiff them on rent. However, there are a lot of people out there that have bad credit for things unrelated to their ability/integrity to pay rent...things such as medical collections, late payments on credit cards from a few years ago, etc. Perhaps some of these "bad credit" people have medical collections or credit card lates, because they put the little bit of money they had into their rent than into their credit? Perhaps some of these people are very likely to be reliable with rent, but the reason they have other bad credit is because they don't put medical collections as a priority as big as paying for their SHELTER, aka a necessity? And yes, one could say that someone would have to research to find a landlord that does not run credit checks, or settle for an apartment possibly far away from their job, or settle for an apartment in an unsafe ghetto neighborhood. HOWEVER: a) researching for a landlord that does not run credit, if you aren't lucky enough to know a lot of people, takes a lot of time that people working like 1000+ hrs at min wage jobs might not have; b) finding one of the rare few apartments that don't run credit, but happens to be far away, will increase commute costs and make paying/getting to the job very difficult; c) moving to a ghetto apartment can increase risk of theft, crime, and other very costly experiences(not to mention potential crime can lead to hospitalization and yes, medical collections!)
There are many many other things that hinder the poor from adequately affording costs of living...and yes, because of credit checks. For example, it is known that "bad credit" people can pay 3-4X more for car insurance than "good credit" people with identical driving/accident records. This makes it even more costly/difficult for a "bad credit" poor person to afford to drive a car, which can make it difficult to get to work if they do not live in a big metropolis city with mass transit. Same thing could happen for health insurance or other kinds of insurance as well. Same thing for someone who wants to purchase a car to make the commute to work cheaper or more possible...with bad credit, someone could get turned down even for a cheap beater car. For example, there was a time that I couldn't afford the gas and insurance to drive my car, so I went carless for a while. This meant taking 3hrs of busses one-way to go to a job 30mins from where I lived; all this wasted time cut into time that I coulda been working, and also cut into my much-needed resting time so that I could be well-rested and alert for work. Going carless also meant that I had to take a cab to a job part-way, and this cab fare added up to much more than my gas expense woulda been for the entire round-trip!
I hate to sound so complaining...but I've been there. Poor, that is. I faced a lot of obstacles and also discrimination from many snobby individuals. Luckily my credit, although not the most established/optimum, was not bad...so once I had the money, I was able to get things like an apartment in a so-so neighborhood(as opposed to the ghetto), affordable insurance, and a car loan for a more reliable vehicle to say the least. Even though I could afford my insurance, it was a total rip-off rate, and it didn't get much better until I moved outside the Philadelphia city limits to a nice suburb apartment that yes, costed more in rent and required credit checks. I hate to sound so pessimistic. But I base my opinions on my experiences, and I consider myself to be a self-starter who works hard and tries to find a way through burdens.





please understand that I'm making the following comments as a 'devil's advocate' ...
bad credit people now pay more for goods and services because, for many years and to some degree even today, GOOD credit people have to pay more for virtually every good and service they purchased in order to cover the losses caused by the bad credit people. This was/is true of the price of every single item on every single store shelf, every credit card transaction, every utility bill etc. which was marked up enough to cover the merchant's / credit card / utility company's bad debt losses. Good credit people also wound up paying higher than necessary loan interest rates, and receiving lower than necessary interest on bank account balances, in order to cover the losses these institutions experienced due to bad credit customers going belly up.
With the institution of last year's new bankruptcy law, which made it much more difficult for a person to simply walk away from past debts and stick others with the resulting costs/losses, persons with earnings potential who go bankrupt today cannot completely escape their past bad debts. However, the new bankruptcy law also means that any new potential creditor (landlord, merchant, utility company, insurance company) now has much higher potential costs to deal with bankrupt tenants / customers over a period of several years of bankruptcy proceedings, whereas in the past they could simply write off the cost of bad debt as a tax deductible business expense. Potential employers also have to deal with higher costs of several years worth of garnished wages and court / financial reporting for poor credit employees. Thus the only real change which has occurred is that bad credit people are being held responsible for more of the costs that they actually create (instead of being subsidized by overcharging good credit people), and landlords / merchants / employers who are now faced with the extra costs and paperwork hassle of a multiple year bankruptcy proceeding are protecting themselves by minimizing the chances of being exposed to a bankrupt tenant / customer / employee.
Last edited by Melonie; 09-16-2006 at 12:20 PM.





Do you really even want to work for an employer who would subject you to this kind of stuff? I don't. But at least you find out in advance about their management style. When I see a red flag like this, it's just an indication of that I probably wouldn't be happy working there anyway. So they fail my interview.





^^^ I hope that you're independently wealthy, because virtually every 'corporate' employer has added credit checks to their pre-employment screening regimen, along with drug tests.
Originally Posted by dlabtot
I had to take a drug test at this one place. Of course I passed - and I worked there for about four weeks to get nice and embedded (and a month's pay.)
Then I told them I felt compromised and violated for them searching my pee. I quit and walked out with a big smile on my face.
Fuckers!
Originally Posted by Melonie
"Corporate" employer's hire Indians these days. Everyone knows there are no jobs with Fortune 500 companies. And if you did get a job - one is at risk every month to loosing it for sake of the CEO's bonus. Ask any Ford manager these days.
Under these new bankruptcy laws I look forward to reduced fees and interest as well perhaps higher limits... or not...Originally Posted by Melonie
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