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Your Debt Isn't Welcome Here
I recently registered at a number of temp agencies in NYC looking for short-term work for the summer. One of the agencies to which I applied deals primarily with large financial and legal corporations. Two of their clients -- Goldman Sachs and Smith Barney -- not only require a potential temp worker to submit to a drug test (which I assume is pretty common now) but they now also require a temp to be fingerprinted for an FBI background check and to submit to a credit check, which to me is the most invasive and unnecessary of the three.
They're all pretty wild hoops when you consider the limited scope a temporary worker has in any business operation, but the credit check really caught me by surprise. I asked the recruiter about it and he said the companies would only flag you if you had a minimum of $10,000 in ignored debt, meaning you hadn't taken any steps to resolve the obligation, weren't working out a payment plan, etc.
Whether you believe those intentions or not, these companies are demanding access to a tremendous volume of information about you in exchange for a job for which you're given no benefits, no vacation, no sick time, no personal days, no job security. Who knows where that information ends up or what the company (or others, including the FBI) eventually do with it. It's an egregious invaision of privacy and beyond any level of acceptibility for that kind of work.
I'm curious to know if anybody else has had a similar experience and if you've gone through the next step of actually fulfilling the requirements and getting the job offer.
Posted by Matt Ransford on 07/11/2005 | Permalink
Comments
It's a complete invasion of privacy. I've done quite a bit of temp work in NYC but I never really worked for either of those companies. I did work a lot for Credit Suisse/First Boston which I later found out was the #1 corporate contributor to the Bush campaign.
The problem is that they have created a work environment that is so hostile and so scarce that people will submit to anything to just get a crappy job, with no benefits, no security and no chance to move up, just to make ends meet.
If you look at the job market in NYC you have people with Master's degrees going up against regular college graduates for the same crap ass jobs. No one should ever have to submit to a credit check to get a job somewhere. I personally think drug tests are too invasive as well. For some reason I don't have as much of an opinion on background checks, I'm not sure why.
That's the catch 22 of working in the job market today. Do you do something really offbeat that allows you to stay out of the corporate loop but that gives you no benefits. Or do you submit and jump through their hoops?
Posted by: James | Jul 11, 2005 2:08:08 PM
I remember reading about the credit check thing in some business journal and it was justified as you were deemed fully responsible to work in a business if you demonstrated financial stability. There was also something about not being a theft or imbezzlement risk as well. The article I read said nothing about only checking for folks who've defaulted on loans, but rather that your credit history in general says how employable you are. What about people who've been on the dole so long they've had to run up their credit cards to make ends meet?
But I think the title of this post sums it up pretty well; once you drop your pants, you're pretty much theirs to begin with.
Posted by: Chardman | Jul 11, 2005 6:19:04 PM
Welcome to the new world of corporate reality. Everything your teachers told you is crap. Get used to "new ideas" using less than you need. Even if you are in a "creative" industry you are now a part of a "team." Guess what? those people that took courses in business, accounting and marketing are now your bosses. Yeaaah! They now control how you can do your job.
Posted by: Rob Mack | Jul 12, 2005 12:08:44 AM
I was asked to submit to a credit check when I applied to Whole Foods to work as a cashier at one of its stores in a New England suburb. I refused. I simply crossed out and initialed that part of the consent agreement before signing. I was hired anyway and have worked there nearly three years.
Now Whole Foods has its applications online exclusively (or available at a computer kiosk in each store) so I don't think customizing the agreement is an option anymore.
Meanwhile, on a sort of related note (just to show how far this has gone), when I was injured on my own time but was ordered by a doctor to take time off from work as a result, CNA, the company supplying the optional disability insurance for which I pay extra out of each paycheck, wanted me to sign a blanket form release agreeing not just to let it check via medical channels the veracity of my claims re work-preventing injury, but to also check my credit, Social Security history, AIDS status, history of drug and alcohol abuse (if any) and college transcripts. I was told by a CNA representative located in Florida that my signature on this specific release was required by HIPAA (a lie) and that it was all the fault of Democrats -- which I think you'll agree was quite a strange misrepresentation for her to volunteer. Instead of swallowing this, I wrote my own release specifying exactly what information CNA could elicit and from whom and, whaddayaknow, CNA's legal department didn't challenge it.
Posted by: Sara | Jul 12, 2005 2:24:50 AM
Do you ever wonder if the reason politicians are having a hissy about "falling fertility rates" is not because of the risk of pension blow-out, but because employees will be sufficiently scarce not to have to eat this sort of shit?
I once applied for an ultra low-level job at a government contractor as a person who would deal with complaints about malfunctioning parking meters - a clear influence on (insert your nation here)'s national security, obviously. They wanted applicants to submit to a urine drug test... BEFORE they were offered the job. I asked "Er... you'd surely only want that if you were quite sure you were going to hire the person?" No, the woman seemed to think it was quite ok to invade someone's privacy this way on the off-chance that they MIGHT offer us a job. I wasn't offered a second interview - a shame, because I really wanted to tell them to get fucked.
Posted by: Ms .45 | Jul 12, 2005 10:01:08 AM
I've been there. I had to go through a stressful job search last year after six years with the same employer, and I was utterly astonished at how intrusive and controlling HR departments had become in the interval. Thank God they weren't (yet) smart enough to include a Google as part of the S.O.P., or I'd probably be living in a cardboard box now.
If something doesn't change soon to alter the relative bargaining strength of labor, we'll be reduced to serfdom.
Posted by: Kevin Carson | Jul 12, 2005 11:50:59 PM
I have had those experiences in applying for temp positions as well as "permanent" positions.
Also, I was removed from a temp position when I complained (to the agency) that another one of their temps was saying racist and anti-semitic things during the workday.
The U.S. is a great place to live and work.
Posted by: zach | Jul 13, 2005 11:30:35 AM
A few years ago I was working for a graphic design temp agency that offered me a placement at one of those giant credit card companies in Wilmington, DE. But taking this position meant submitting to a urine test. I just told my temp agency I wouldn't do it. I certainly would have passed the dumb test (and I told them so), but I just couldn't knuckle under to this as a matter of personal privacy. I eventually got another placement so it wasn't a big deal, and telling my temp agency that I would not submit to urine tests kept it off the table while I worked there.
Of course, that was pre 9/11 so it's hard to say if this kind of tactic could still work, or whether the credit check/urine test is so pervasive that it's near impossible to avoid.
Posted by: Kristin | Jul 15, 2005 7:46:56 AM
I've been temping in Manhattan off-and-on since about 1997. I've only been required to submit a urine test once -- when hired as a full-time proofreader by Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.
As for credit checks, I only reluctantly give out my Social Security number, because I half-paranoically believe that anytime you give out that number your background will be checked.
My belief is that it's a horribe practice (and highly suspect) that our Soc.Sec. numbers have become the unquestioned standard as a general-use ID number. This is Big Brother at his finest and I only give out that number when hired or when absolutely necessary. I feel that it opens all of us to greater risk of identity theft and erroneous 'Homeland Security' background checks and even, perhaps, arrests in extreme cases.
Like the previous writer, I actually don't care so much about background checks as I have nothing to hide -- busted for smoking a joint as a high-schooler, a few moving violations. Nothing to hide, so take a look if you need to ... but general, mindless give-out of your Soc.Security number should become a no-no.
Posted by: Greg von Bronx | Jul 18, 2005 10:38:35 AM
I live in eastern Kentucky, and when I asked for an application to work at the goddamned Family Dollar, all I got was a release form to permit them to do a criminal background check, a drug test, and a credit check. Really. There weren't even lines for references, let alone previous employment.
Bear in mind that this was a position for stocking merchandise. (But I guess if you're stocking merchandise that was produced by third world toddlers in exchange for breast milk, $5.15 an hour seems like such hot shit that you'll suffer any indignity.)
By the way - drug testing, according to the latest, lamest "Rolling Stone" is becoming less, not more, prevalent. About 44% of employers currently perform the tests, compared to 68% a decade ago. For more on the subject, I reccomend "Pissing on Demand: Workplace Drug Testing and the Rise of the Detox Industry" by (fellow Kentuckian) Kenneth D. Tunnell.
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