FICO is 529? NO JOB FOR YOU!!!!!!
Okay so the tone of my last post got a little over the top there at the end. If anything that post should give all of you out there an indication of how some of us are feeling right now. A lot of us are frustrated because we have been doing anything and everything to get a job so that we can keep our families warm and fed, only to get very little or no response at all and a general feeling that we are wasting our time. It’s no wonder why so many underutilized workers have simply given up looking for a job, with so many roadblocks and deafening silence being thrown at us its a wonder that we haven’t just thrown in the proverbial towel at this point. But some of us refuse to be beaten by the system, by pundits on cable news or talk radio, by naysayers who try to convince us that we are actually lazy and don’t really want to work…
…or by our elders who not only have protested a stimulus package that would create jobs for us, but are now screaming and yelling at town hall meetings that we want to kill them.
Why the hell would we want to do that? It’s not as if we would get anything out of it! I mean their retirement packages went down the drain when the economy collapsed – along with our inheritance – so there would be no reason for us to kill them. If anyone is trying to kill anybody its our elders who are trying to kill their Grandchildren by making it more difficult for them to see a doctor if they’re sick. How are they trying to do that? By killing any chance at reform, that’s how! Without reform we might not be able to afford preventative health care, let alone catastrophic health care for our families – unless we win the lottery!
So if little Suzie gets sick or if little Timmy gets hurt riding his bike then guess what? Grandma and Grandpa don’t want them to get better by going to a doctor, that’s what! As long as Grandma and Grandpa get to go to their doctor then that’s fine with them. But the second anyone else wants the right to health care of their own all hell breaks loose. Then we start talking about “death panels” and “socialized medicine” which already exist in this country courtesy of the HMO’s and Medicare respectively, people start getting death threats, people start loading up their guns – while others try to figure out how to afford to buy a gun, take safety courses in it’s use, and whether or not he might be able to find non-lethal ammo when the next gun show comes to town.
I’m just saying…
Meanwhile an article was posted recently at MSN Careers about how employers are using our credit reports against us when it comes to hiring decisions. The author of the piece, Eve Tahmincioglu, reported that she was getting a lot of e-mails from people who were irate about the practice. One of them was named Lynn B., who was laid off from a telecommunications company and she wrote: “Americans’ credit scores are getting lower because they’ve been laid off and are having trouble paying bills, and they can’t get hired to make money to pay the bills because their credit score is ‘too low,’ even though they may normally have a good score, I’m just kind of shocked.” Yeah Lynn, you’re not the only one.
But what really gets me are the pathetic excuses that these employers make when they try to justify this discriminatory practice. “Employers reviewing a credit report want to see that the applicant is financially stable, not overextended, and meeting his or her obligations in a responsible manner,” says Sam Davidson, customer service manager with Bills.com.Then there’s Jay Meschke, president of the executive search firm EFL Associates, which is an affiliate of business services company CBIZ who chimes in with: “If, for example, an applicant reports a significant level of personal debt obligations or credit delinquencies that might distract that person from his/her job responsibilities, then a hiring entity may take that information into consideration when comparing such an applicant to another comparative candidate without such distractions.”
So let me get this straight – these companies won’t hire us if our credit score is bad because the debt we’re carrying might distract us from doing the job since we will be worrying and fretting and wringing our hands and rendering our garments all of the time so that we can’t get any work done?!?
I have to admit – that’s a new one that I had never heard before. I’ve heard that a bad credit report means that we would be irresponsible on the job or that we would steal from an employer, but I hadn’t heard that we would be too busy flagellating ourselves with a cat-o-nine-tails to get any work done. I’m surprised that they don’t think that our daily wardrobe would consist of sackcloth and that we would come into the office with ashes rubbed all over our face.
It is just another excuse to eliminate otherwise qualified applicants from gaining employment - PERIOD!!! It’s like those psychological tests that some of these companies make applicants take before they will hire them or not. You know, the tests that give you different scenarios like “if you saw a co-worker stealing would you report it?” kind of thing. When I worked at PetCo I can’t tell you how many qualified people we were not allowed to hire because of those things. They would come in with all of the qualifications we were looking for and looked to be a perfect fit for the job. But as soon as they took the test the company we were contracted with would usually come back and tell us “No, You can’t hire them.” So we would end up with flakes who would quit after a couple of weeks because they found out they were expected to work, and our turnover was always high as a result.
The real bitch of this whole situation is that it is not illegal for companies to do this. It is not against the law for an employer – any employer – to deny you and me a job based on our credit score. They cannot discriminate against us because of gender, race, ethnic orgin, age, religion or physical handicap, and in some states – sexual orientation. However they can legally discriminate against us for falling on hard times and not being able to pay our mortgage.
And let’s be totally honest here – that is exactly what we are talking about here and that is what is happening to a lot of us. We are being discriminated against because we have fallen on hard times. We are being discriminated against because we had the misfortune to get laid-off and haven’t been able to secure employment yet. We are being discriminated against because we have fallen behind. We are being discriminated against because a credit report doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about that person, yet some HR directors are acting like “The Job Nazi”, snapping their fingers and denying us an opportunity. We are being discriminated against and it is hurting a lot of good people who are trying to do the right thing…
…and it should be illegal!!!
Now Congress passing a law prohibiting this practice might not do much good, I mean the practice might still be done, it just won’t be talked about openly – much like it is now. Even if there was a law passed companies would still call up peoples credit reports and only hire those with a score of 700 or better. Look, it may be illegal for people to rob convenience stores, but they still do it!
So I am going to start a list of companies that are suspected of running credit checks on their applicants, and to compile this list I will need your help. If you have applied for a job with a company, any company no matter how big or how small, and you believe that you didn’t get the job because of a credit report – write to me and let me know about it. Send your story to info@bigdaddycool.info and be sure to include the name of the company and the circumstances. In an attempt to protect identities the only identification you need to give would be your first name and the first initial of your last name. I will create a new page up here on the blog and I will list the companies you give me along with some of the stories you have to tell.
If they really want to do a credit check on us, then it’s time that we did a worthiness check on them. If they want to discriminate against people in our situation, then we have a right to spread the word about who to avoid in the future.
Only then when the economy does improve and it becomes a job seekers market again, we can look those HR directors from those companies and say:
“you’re finished Job Nazi! No more jobs for you.”
“NEXT!!!!!!”
