Overlawyered » criminal records and hiring

Labor and employment roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 04:05:49 +0000

Controversy over new EEOC guidelines on hiring ex-cons isn’t going away [James Bovard/Peter Kirsanow, Richard Epstein/Hoover "Defining Ideas", Kevin Funnell, Wendy McElroy/FEE]
That goes double if it’s true: “You cannot fire a pregnant employee because ‘the baby is taking its toll on you’” [Cohen, Fox Rothschild] Maryland bill would grant pregnant employees right to accommodation, “less strenuous job duties” if needed [Baltimore Sun]
And similarly: “Is an employer obligated to provide light duty to an employee returning from FMLA leave?” [Jon Hyman]
Why Card-Krueger study doesn’t change Bryan Caplan’s view on economics of the minimum wage [EconLib]
Quest for a Labor Secretary even farther left than Hilda Solis eventuates in Tom Perez [Katrina Trinko, J. Christian Adams]
Unhappy aftermath of Connecticut nursing-home sabotage [Washington Examiner] Assaults by members of Teamster local in Philadelphia quarry dispute draw NLRB response [Pennsylvania Independent]
Will New York become the first state to create dangerous private right of action for “workplace bullying”? [Michael Fox]

Tags: bullying, criminal records and hiring, EEOC, labor unions, minimum wage, New York, Philadelphia, pregnancy discrimination

Labor and employment roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Labor and employment roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 04:07:22 +0000

On minimum wage these days, Krugman lets politics sit in for economics [David Henderson] Minimum wage hikes don’t cost jobs? A notion so ideologically convenient just has to be true [Steve Chapman]
“Is employment a ‘human right’”? [Richard Epstein, Hoover "Defining Ideas"]
Project labor agreements are an unjustified giveaway in New Jersey’s post-Sandy reconstruction [Trey Kovacs, CEI Open Market]
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake proposes public pension reform [Baltimore Sun] Reality check on sunny New York projections [@NYDNHammond]
Peter Kirsanow on EEOC crackdown on criminal background checks [Employee Screen]
Three Missouri Dems favor bill making it felony for lawmakers to propose bills limiting union powers [Robby Soave, Daily Caller]
Meet the brothers who are standing up to union violence in Philadelphia construction [Jillian Melchior, NR, earlier]

Tags: Baltimore, criminal records and hiring, EEOC, labor unions, minimum wage, Missouri, New Jersey, Paul Krugman, Philadelphia

Labor and employment roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“NCAA sued over rule barring felons”

Walter Olson — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:16:44 +0000

“A nonprofit group sued the NCAA on Wednesday over a new policy that bars felons from coaching NCAA-sanctioned events. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Diego, claims that the new rule violates the Civil Rights Act and disproportionately affects minority coaches.” [ESPN, auto-plays video] The suit dovetails with the EEOC’s new crackdown on employer consideration of criminal records, which as James Bovard writes in the Wall Street Journal, seems calculated to raise the legal risks substantially for employers who put job applicants through criminal background checks: it denies the “business necessity” defense to employers even when a state’s law mandates the use of criminal checks, and requires most employers seeking to consider criminal records to enter a legal minefield of obligatory “individualized assessment” in which decisions can be second-guessed readily and expensively:

It is difficult to overstate the EEOC’s zealotry on this issue. The agency is demanding that one of [former EEOC general counsel Donald] Livingston’s clients — the Freeman Companies, a convention and corporate events planner — pay compensation to rejected job applicants who lied about their criminal records.

(& T. Andrew Perkins)

Tags: criminal records and hiring, sports

“NCAA sued over rule barring felons” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Labor and employment roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 04:07:25 +0000

McDonald’s worker complains she’s not paid $15/hour, but there’s a logical problem with that [David Henderson]
EEOC Phoenix office signs pact with Mexican consulates to curb discrimination against illegals [EEOC press release]
“Former Lawmaker (and Ex-Felon) Urges Connecticut To Ban Discrimination Against Felons in 2013″ [Daniel Schwartz]
Connecticut: “NLRB sues to reinstate union saboteurs at nursing homes” [Gehrke, DC Examiner, Schwartz, Jillian Kay Melchior/NRO, earlier on pols that enable the strikers] More: Ivan Osorio.
OSHA after clerk robbery: “handling money, working alone and standing behind open counters” expose employer to violations [OSHA press release]
“N.D. Ill.: Under ADAAA, Asthma Triggered by Strong Perfume Might Be Disability” [Bagenstos]
“Worker centers” allow organizers to dodge the legal responsibilities owed to workers by actual labor unions [Stefan Marculewicz and Jennifer Thomas, Fed Soc]

Tags: Connecticut, criminal records and hiring, EEOC, immigration law, labor unions, minimum wage, nursing homes, OSHA

Labor and employment roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Labor and employment roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 04:06:17 +0000

Labor/employment law: the last four years, and the next [Daniel Schwartz series: first, second, interview] “Some Thoughts on the Meaning of a Second Obama Term for Labor and Employment Law” [Paul Secunda]
“Alcoholic Tested Without Cause Can Proceed With Bias Claim” [Mary Pat Gallagher, NJLJ]
“The ‘I’s have it: NLRB says don’t shred those at-will disclaimers just yet” [Jon Hyman]
“Knox Supreme Court Decision Strengthens Worker Rights” [Mark Mix, Bench Memos]
“City Councils, EEOC Grapple with Employment Protections for Ex-Convicts” [Shannon Green, Corp Counsel]
Leftward efforts to constitutionalize labor and employment law [Workplace Prof]
Should this bother privacy advocates? “NLRB looks to give workers’ private contact info to unions” [Washington Examiner]
Drama unfolds as backers push right-to-work law in Michigan [Shikha Dalmia]

Tags: alcohol, Barack Obama, constitutional law, criminal records and hiring, labor unions, privacy

Labor and employment roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Discrimination law roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 04:06:03 +0000

In DC today? I’ll be commenting at Cato on new Russell Nieli book on affirmative action [details]
EEOC continues to pressure employers over use of criminal background checks in hiring process [Hans Bader, Daniel Schwartz, Jon Hyman, earlier]
Bill in Congress would require employers to make ADA-like accommodation for pregnancy/childbirth [Hyman]
“Religious freedom and the nondiscrimination norm” [Rick Garnett, Prawfs] What is supposed to make discrimination so tempting, anyway? [Bryan Caplan, EconLib]
Lawsuit alleges that group car rental discount for members of gay group constitutes unlawful discrimination against straights [Volokh]
Complainants argue in Strasbourg that UK failure to more fully accommodate Christians violates Euro human rights law [Telegraph]
Push for ADA coverage of obesity raises controversy [Christina Wilkie, HuffPo]

Tags: criminal records and hiring, discrimination law, EEOC, obesity, pregnancy discrimination, religious discrimination

Discrimination law roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Great moments in financial employment regulation

Walter Olson — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 21:35:26 +0000

Thanks to new federal banking and mortgage guidelines with $1-million-a-day penalties for noncompliance, banks are scrambling to fire any employee who has previously been convicted of a crime involving dishonesty. Among those tossed out: a bank employee with seven years’ service who used a slug in a washing machine in 1963, and a 58-year-old customer service representative with a shoplifting conviction forty years ago. A lawyer says thousands of employees have been fired under the new rules. [Des Moines Register/USA Today via ABA Journal]

Tags: banks, criminal records and hiring, mortgages

Great moments in financial employment regulation is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Hey, EEOC….

Walter Olson — Wed, 30 May 2012 17:30:28 +0000

… can we have a heart-to-heart talk about some of what’s wrong with your new guidelines restricting employers from asking about job applicants’ criminal records? [Robin Shea] More: Diane Katz/Heritage, Ted Frank, Federalist Society podcast with Maurice Emsellem, Dominique Ludvikson and Dean Reuter, Brian Wolfman/Public Citizen (favorable to rules). Amy Alkon rounds up several more links, regarding which it should be noted that the EEOC has traditionally conceded an employer’s right to consider an embezzler’s rap sheet when filling a bookkeeping job — but not necessarily an axe-murderer’s rap sheet, since that’s not demonstrably “job-relevant.” Don’t you feel reassured now?

In related news, Roger Clegg reports that the House has passed a provision blocking EEOC enforcement of the guidance, which is encouraging as a preliminary matter; the Senate, however, is very likely to take a different position, and the rider will have no effect if the Senate view prevails. [NRO]

Tags: criminal records and hiring, EEOC, illegal drugs, Senate

Hey, EEOC…. is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Because what could go wrong?

Walter Olson — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 11:44:34 +0000

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is said to be readying policy guidance aimed at curbing employers’ consideration of criminal and credit records in hiring. [WSJ editorial]

Tags: criminal records and hiring, EEOC

Because what could go wrong? is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Will restricting criminal background checks actually increase minority unemployment?”

Walter Olson — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 05:24:06 +0000

One of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s current big projects — making it legally hazardous for employers to check job applicants’ criminal records — could actually backfire, according to research cited by some members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights [Caroline May, Daily Caller]:

Civil Rights Commissioners Peter Kirsanow, Gail Heriot and Todd Gaziano pointed to research from economists Harry Holzer and Stephen Rafael and public policy professor Michael Stoll, published in the Journal of Law and Economics, which showed that employers with access to background checks are actually more likely to hire African Americans, especially African American men, than those without access to that informaion.

“Their results suggest that, in the absence of criminal background checks, some employers discriminate statistically against black men and/or those with weak employment records,” the commissioners pointed out in their letter to the EEOC.

Tags: criminal records and hiring, EEOC

“Will restricting criminal background checks actually increase minority unemployment?” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system