In a press release, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren along with five other Senate Democrats announced the introduction of legislation to end the practice of some employers to require a job applicant to disclose their credit rating.
Senator Warren Introduces Legislation to Prohibit Employers from Requiring Credit Report Disclosure
Dec 17, 2013
Fact Sheet is Available Here (pdf)
Text of the Legislation is Available Here (pdf)
Washington, DC – United States Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) today introduced the Equal Employment for All Act with Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). The legislation would prohibit employers from requiring potential employees to disclose their credit history as part of the job application process. It was previously thought that credit history may provide insight into an individual’s character, but research has shown that an individual’s credit rating has little to no correlation with his or her ability to be successful in the workplace.
“A bad credit rating is far more often the result of unexpected medical costs, unemployment, economic downturns, or other bad breaks than it is a reflection on an individual’s character or abilities,” Senator Warren said. “Families have not fully recovered from the 2008 financial crisis, and too many Americans are still searching for jobs. This is about basic fairness — let people compete on the merits, not on whether they already have enough money to pay all their bills.”
A study from the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year suggested that errors in credit reports are common and, in many cases, have been difficult to correct. “It makes no sense to make it harder for people to get jobs because of a system of credit reporting that has no correlation with job performance and that can be riddled with inaccuracies,” Warren said. [..]
Senator Warren’s bill is based on H.R. 645, which was introduced by Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-9) in 2011.
Sen. Warren joins the host of MSNBC’s “All In” Chris Hayes to talk about her bill to stop employers from using an applicant’s credit score in the vetting process.
Take Action and sign the petition to support Equal Employment for All Act and end the practice of denying employment based on credit scores,
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