Blacklisted? Any way I can find out for sure.

[jeffd0078]

What is the name of your state? Iowa.

Sorry, this is gonna be long, but I'm gonna give you the whole story.

I worked at a helpdesk for a large bank that already has a reputation for bad treatment of their employees. Sometime back around January or February, I'm thinking I must have done something or said something that my manager at work just plain didn't like. Starting around that time period, I started getting written up for things I either hadn't done, or things that other co-workers were doing around me that I also did. In that time period, my manager also had several "conversations" with me, alone, no other participants in which I was threatened with being blacklisted and told "you need to find a new place to work." This happened on several occasions in which he conveniently made sure nobody else was present and was never done through a traceable medium, like email or over the phone. He continued to harrass me and watch every little move I made, looking for any slip up or mistake that HR would let him fire me for. This finally happened about two to three weeks ago. I did something that, oddly enough, the technician that sat next to me had done a few months before. I said something I shouldn't have without muting the microphone on my phone and it was heard by the individual monitoring the call, possibly my manager, I'm not sure. I got fired for this, and my co-worker didn't get fired for doing almost exactly the same thing months before.

So now, I'm job hunting and have been to several interviews. A couple of these interviews ended with the employer saying they wanted to hire me, as soon as they checked my references and work history. Imagine my suprise when I received, in the mail, rejection letters from all of them. I contacted all of my references and none of them have even been contacted. I have no criminal record or anything bad that would have shown up in a background check, other than a driving record that demonstrates a lead foot and none of these jobs specify the need for a clean driving record. Then I remembered my manager threatening that if I got fired from this particular company, I'd never find work in the Des Moines area or Iowa again. Sound fishy to anyone else?

 

[seniorjudge]

Q: Sound fishy to anyone else?

A: Not to me.

 

[cbg]

Technically, blacklisting would mean that your current employer is calling all prospective employers, unsolicited, and urging them not to hire you. So no, I don't think you're being blacklisted.

It's too soon to say if your employer is providing negative feedback and if so, whether or not what he is saying would provide you with any legal recourse. I promise you that you are not the only candidate that each prospective employer is checking on, and only one of you is going to get the job.

It's a tight job market and it's taking much longer for people with excellent references to find jobs than they believe it ought to; many of them assume that it MUST be their former employer saying bad things about them because there's no reason why they shouldn't be hired if that were not the case. They fail to take into consideration that they are by no means the only fish in the sea; that there were probably a dozen or more equally qualified candidates interviewed as well. It isn't the 90's any more; it's a seller's market out there.

If the pattern you speak of continues, you might want to consider hiring a reference-checking service or having a trusted friend call pretending to be a prospective employer. But it's just too soon to assume that your former employer is in any way involved.

IF it should prove that your reference from the former employer is negative, whether you have any legal recourse will depend upon EXACTLY what he is saying. If he offering his honest but negative opinion, you're out of luck; he is entitled by law to do so. Only if he is citing as fact something that is not fact will you have any legal claim. He can legally say, "I thought he had a bad attitude and that he mismanaged the Johnson account"'; he cannot say, "We fired him for stealing" (unless, of course, they DID fire you for stealing ).

 

[InsuranceLadyAZ]

If the pattern you speak of continues, you might want to consider hiring a reference-checking service or having a trusted friend call pretending to be a prospective employer.

That's good advice. I did that one time when everyone thought I was crazy for thinking my former employer was telling lies about me to prospective employers. Turns out, I was right. If the OP really thinks this is going on, I think this is a good way to find out for sure.