Public Employee Press

Bill will stop credit checks on job seekers

District Council 37 has joined dozens of organizations and elected officials in the NYC Coalition to Stop Credit Card Checks in Employment campaign. Rallying behind legislation introduced by City Council members Brad Lander and Deborah Rose, they hope to stop the practice of using credit history checks to screen job applicants.

At a recent hearing of the City Council's Committee on Civil Rights, DC 37 MELS Associate Director Robert Martin testified in support of the bill that would prevent discrimination against job seekers because of their credit history. Martin said there is no data showing that a person's credit report predicts job performance and that credit reports are notoriously inaccurate. He urged the Council to pass Intro 261 without any changes.

"The expectation of seeking work and being fairly judged on your abilities and qualifications is about as fundamental a right as there is," said Martin. "Forcing job applicants to undergo a credit check that bears no relation to their fitness for the job is not fair and cannot be allowed."

A comprehensive study conducted in 2013 by the Federal Trade Commission found that one in five American consumers had errors on credit reports issued by one of the three major credit reporting companies. Despite this evidence, nearly half of U.S. employers now check credit histories of job applicants and sometimes employees, using the reports in making employment decisions.

The bill, the Stop Credit Discrimination in Employment Act, Intro 261, has the support of 41 members of the City Council.

Council member Ydanis Rodriguez is one of the supporters of the bill, saying this would especially help college students. "Sometimes, they didn't build the best credit or they got into debt," he said. "It takes years for some people to clean their credit reports."

In an October 2014 editorial, The New York Times wrote in support of the bill, strongly urging the City Council and Mayor Bill de Blasio to pass it into law.