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Employer requiring regular proof of Drivers License and Ins. for operating my vehicle

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Zigner

Senior Member, Non-Attorney
I am not sure that I agree with that one. There are lots of perfectly legal reasons to fire someone that do not rule out someone collecting unemployment compensation. Refusing to give out your driver's license and insurance information is not an egregious thing, and an argument can even be made that to refuse to do so is to help protect yourself from identity theft. An employer already has a lot of someone's personal information. Adding driver's license and insurance info on top of that would practically give an identity thief the full package.
That's ridiculous. There is no law against requiring the information, so it's a lawful requirement, particularly since the OP does drive on company business. If the OP is fully aware of the consequence of willful failure to provide the information and still refused, then UI payments won't be coming the OP's way.

As to your statement about identity theft: Having the driver's license or not doesn't matter. The employer has any employee's name, address, social, and identity documents for the I9, which often (but not always) include the driver's license anyway. And how would knowing insurance info increase the chance of identity theft? One last thing to consider is this: The state already requires that the driver's license and insurance be given to total strangers in certain instances, so why would you believe that giving the information to a long-term employer is any worse?
 


PayrollHRGuy

Senior Member
I am not sure that I agree with that one. There are lots of perfectly legal reasons to fire someone that do not rule out someone collecting unemployment compensation. Refusing to give out your driver's license and insurance information is not an egregious thing, and an argument can even be made that to refuse to do so is to help protect yourself from identity theft. An employer already has a lot of someone's personal information. Adding driver's license and insurance info on top of that would practically give an identity thief the full package.
Really, While there are a ton of termination reasons that will allow someone to get UI this isn't one of them. First, it is a completely reasonable request from the employer. It is even one that the OP has already been doing. Second, concern for ID theft isn't a issue. The employer already has, as Zinger said, way more information than is at issue here but already has the same information other than any new insurance information that may come up on renewal.

All of that said I don't see how the OP's employer gains anything by asking to see the DL each month. What they should be doing is running an MVR on the OP each month and a single authorization at time of hire and maybe annually would do that. Looking at the actual DL does nothing for them other than show the OP has the licence on their person.
 

LdiJ

Senior Member
That's ridiculous. There is no law against requiring the information, so it's a lawful requirement, particularly since the OP does drive on company business. If the OP is fully aware of the consequence of willful failure to provide the information and still refused, then UI payments won't be coming the OP's way.

As to your statement about identity theft: Having the driver's license or not doesn't matter. The employer has any employee's name, address, social, and identity documents for the I9, which often (but not always) include the driver's license anyway. And how would knowing insurance info increase the chance of identity theft? One last thing to consider is this: The state already requires that the driver's license and insurance be given to total strangers in certain instances, so why would you believe that giving the information to a long-term employer is any worse?
Again, I simply do not agree with you. Driving oneself to a meeting twice a month is no different than driving oneself to work and back home again. That is not "driving on company business". I agree that its perfectly legal for someone to be fired for refusing to provide that information. What I disagree with is that its an automatic bar to collecting unemployment. If you want to believe that it is, that is your right. You have every right to have your own personal opinion on the matter. However, so do I.
 

Zigner

Senior Member, Non-Attorney
Again, I simply do not agree with you. Driving oneself to a meeting twice a month is no different than driving oneself to work and back home again. That is not "driving on company business".
You are wrong on this one. If the employee gets in an accident between the office and the meeting, then the employer is responsible. This is not simply a commute, this is a drive from the office to the client and back for a required work meeting.
 

commentator

Senior Member
If this person has ever, even ONE SINGLE TIME given the employer his license information, etc. then he has agreed to the terms of the job. (Of course, if he had not agreed to come up with this information in the first place, he probably wouldn't have gotten the job at all! His choice.) And if the employer changes the job requirements, or sets up the job requirements so that they ask for this stuff to be updated twice a month or once a week, whatever, then the employee is of course, free to quit because he considers this request egregious, considers it just too much, illogical, violates his right to protect his personal information, etc.

But there's not ---well, lets make this a little more professional, it is highly unlikely that he has much chance of the unemployment system considering this a valid reason to quit, having exhausted all reasonable alternatives to quitting. What has happened to this bird is that he's gotten a DUI and doesn't want his employers to know about it. Apparently his employers are sticklers for having their employees stay valid as far as driving goes, they have made the decision to extend this particular requirement to everyone in the workforce, even those who do not as a rule regularly operate company vehicles. They can do this. They're the employer.

Example, all prison guards (state employees) have to be drug tested regularly. Therefore, the state can legitimately ask all employees, from the governor on down, to be drug tested regularly, in the name of fairness. Of course if you are a wheezer government official, you can complain or you can quit, but you knew, from the beginning of accepting your job, that you could if they so desired, be subjected to the same level of drub testing as other employees.
 

Chyvan

Member
valid reason to quit,
He doesn't need to quit. He refuses to provide the DL and proof of insurance, and the employer will either say, "oh, ok," or "don't come back to work." That's a firing. Now, there needs to be misconduct, and I'm not seeing it.
 

Zigner

Senior Member, Non-Attorney
He doesn't need to quit. He refuses to provide the DL and proof of insurance, and the employer will either say, "oh, ok," or "don't come back to work." That's a firing. Now, there needs to be misconduct, and I'm not seeing it.
Insubordination can easily be considered misconduct.
 

Chyvan

Member
Insubordination can easily be considered misconduct.
Insubordination is when you won't do the job you were hired for, it's not a requirement that you do anything that you never agreed to do.

Think of the secretary that gets brought rubber gloves and toilet cleaner and she tells them to pound sand.
 

Chyvan

Member
Refusing a lawful order of the employer is also insubordination.
Great, but that doesn't mean it's misconduct. Insubordination doesn't always mean misconduct.

http://www.edd.ca.gov/UIBDG/Misconduct_MC_255.htm

CA has a huge write up on it. I'd love to be fired for "insubordination."
 

Taxing Matters

Overtaxed Member
I'd love to be fired for "insubordination."
Really? I guess maybe you would if your goal in life is to get paid a few months on unemployment comp. Given what unemployment comp pays, I personally don't see that as very attractive. If what you mean is that if you're going to be fired anyway you'd rather it be for insubordination rather than something else, that I might understand.
 

eerelations

Senior Member
Really? I guess maybe you would if your goal in life is to get paid a few months on unemployment comp. Given what unemployment comp pays, I personally don't see that as very attractive. If what you mean is that if you're going to be fired anyway you'd rather it be for insubordination rather than something else, that I might understand.
Chyvan's goal in life is to be fired every year so that she can receive UI benefits while spending the summer hanging out with her kids. For some reason she believes this should be everyone else's goal in life too.
 

PayrollHRGuy

Senior Member
Great, but that doesn't mean it's misconduct. Insubordination doesn't always mean misconduct.

http://www.edd.ca.gov/UIBDG/Misconduct_MC_255.htm

CA has a huge write up on it. I'd love to be fired for "insubordination."
And I would love the be the employer arguing the other side.
 

Zigner

Senior Member, Non-Attorney
Great, but that doesn't mean it's misconduct. Insubordination doesn't always mean misconduct.

http://www.edd.ca.gov/UIBDG/Misconduct_MC_255.htm

CA has a huge write up on it. I'd love to be fired for "insubordination."
Actually, from your own citation:

"If the employer's order is reasonable and lawful, the claimant’s wilful (sic) disobedience without justification would constitute misconduct. "
 

LdiJ

Senior Member
Actually, from your own citation:

"If the employer's order is reasonable and lawful, the claimant’s wilful (sic) disobedience without justification would constitute misconduct. "
That would depend on whose interpretation of "reasonable" would be used. Some would think it unreasonable to require that information, some would think it reasonable.
 

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