California has a new law that will ban most credit checks for employment. I salute the nation’s most populous state for kicking the idiotic practice of employers requiring credit checks to the curb.
My stance has long been why should employers kick people while they’re down? Let’s face it, people have gone through lengthy periods of unemployment, they can’t pay their bills and then they won’t be even be considered for employment because they didn’t pay Visa or MasterCard on time?!
There are a few exceptions to California’s law. These include employees who handle money; people who are in possession of trade secrets; and those who are police officers, among them. All of the exceptions obviously all make a lot of sense.
On the other extreme, I previously told you the California legislature passed a law banning big box stores like Wal-Mart and Target from opening in order to protect union supermarket workers. Thankfully, the governor vetoed that. So there is no ban in place now.
But then something else cropped up regarding unions strong-arming laws through the state legislature. There is a grocery discounter called Fresh & Easy that has a lot of locations in California, a majority of them featuring self-service checkouts. The grocery unions got a law passed that said if you sell alcohol, as Fresh & Easy does, then you have to have people ringing you up to make sure kids don’t come in to buy alcohol. Sure, I agree on one level, but I believe there are better ways to deal with this question other than requiring “make work ” kind of jobs, which is what the unions are trying to do.
Oh well, at least there’s balance when it comes to the job issue with California now banning credit reports as a prerequisite for getting a job. I wish all 50 states would follow their lead on that one.
