Pre-Employment Consumer Report Agreement

What is the name of your state?What is the name of your state? Missouri

Re: Pre-Employment Consumer Report Agreement

More and more companies are requiring job applicants to sign a Consumer Report Agreement prior to any offer of employment. These agreements allow a company to check into the following aspects of the applicant's background:

your character, employment history, general reputation, personal characteristics, court record, motor vehicle record, mode of living, and/or credit and indebtedness

What I don't understand is how is it legal for a company to request mode of living and/or credit and indebtedness records on a prospective employee? This has nothing to do with whether or not a person can perform a specific job or not. And if you refuse to sign the form, you can forget about being hired. So why is this being allowed?

What can we do, on an individual basis, to stop this violation on our privacy?

Start your own company. Working for someone else is not a right.

Those questions apply to the industry I work in: brokerage. Do you want us hiring a broker with a criminal record of money laundering? Or a back-office employee that handles journals (direct alteration of account balances or money movement between accounts) to have such a poor credit history that they would be tempted to journal some money to their own account?

Cheese is right: if you don't like the practice, start a company that doesn't do it. You'll start doing it as soon as you get burned by your first rotten apple.

- Carl