Hire Image LLC

Hire Image  reports that Maryland Governor Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. explained his reasons for vetoing the Maryland Ban the Box legislation (Senate Bill 839 and House Bill 994) in a letter to the President of the Senate and Speaker of the House.  In that letter, he notes that hiring the right team is “one of the most critical activities a business does” and that requiring a business to wait to ask an applicant about his or her criminal history until the first in-person interview would result in “costly and time-consuming human resource work that ultimately goes nowhere.” The Governor also mentions hiring delays, wasted time and resources, additional costs without adequate returns, and safety concerns as his numerous reasons for the veto.  In particular, with regard to safety,  Hire Image  notes the exemption for children and vulnerable adults, which begs the question – what about everyone else?  The legislation also contained what he called “dangerous pr...

Ban the Box has been in effect since 2014 in Washington, D.C., but you wouldn’t know it by the actions of some D.C. businesses.  More than 1,100 administrative charges have been filed against employers who continue to ask about criminal histories on job applications, despite the ban. Those charges have resulted in approximately $500,000 in fines, according to a report by the D.C. Office of Human Rights and  Hire Image  information.The report also notes that the city has received more than 1,800 complaints since the D.C. Council passed the Fair Criminal Record Screening Act, which prevented employers from inquiring about an applicant’s criminal history before an offer is made. With regard to the violations, a vast majority of them (more than 90%) were related to criminal background questions that appeared on job applications, while less than 5% were related to questions an employer asked in an interview. Penalties for violations of D.C.’s  Ban the Box law ,...

Hire Image  will host a free webinar:  Is Your Drug-Free Workplace Going Up in Smoke? Hire Image ’s CEO, Christine Cunneen and Sarah R. Skubas, Principal at Jackson Lewis P.C will discuss  safe workplace practices in order to protect employees, customers and property. There is also little doubt that a large contributing factor to a safe workplace is a drug-free work policy.  However, when marijuana is now legal (in some form) in over 50% of the states, how do they go about implementing one?  With each new law seems to come a new question for employers. What are my rights as an employer?  Am I allowed to drug test all of my candidates and current employees?  Do I need a new Drug-Free Work Policy?  Should I change my drug testing program?  The questions are endless.  To further complicate matters, recent court rulings, including those involving federal contractors, are interpreting the various laws with varied opinions. Get the ...

Effectively immediately:  An  Act to Protect Employee’s Credit Information  prohibits employers from refusing to hire, dismissing, or otherwise discriminating against an employee or applicant because of information contained in his or her credit report. Additionally, employers are prohibited from verifying or obtaining credit history information of an employee or applicant, unless it relates to the hiring of the following positions:  a managerial position, a position for which a credit report is required by law, a position that requires access to financial or personal information of other persons, a position that requires access to trade secrets, or a position that requires a fiduciary responsibility to the employer. Employers in Puerto Rico should review their hiring procedures and make any necessary revisions based on the new law.  If a credit report is allowed, based on one of the positions listed above, the employer should get written consent from the...

The legislative trend banning salary history questions is clearly not going anywhere. In fact, it is quite the opposite. At times, it seems nearly as if it’s an epidemic spreading throughout the country. Through the passage of various state and local laws, an employer’s ability to inquire about a job applicant’s salary history is diminishing at an increasing rate. The trend itself is not new, the pace; however, is.  Starting over three years ago, with Massachusetts and Philadelphia, salary history bans never impacted as many states as they did in 2019. Today, 14 states (and Puerto Rico) and 8 localities have passed salary history bans for private employers, with an astounding 50% of those passed in 2019 alone.  In addition to bans on private employers, 3 states and 10 localities have passed similar legislation for public employers. Some of the laws passed in 2019 are already in effect, including Alabama, Illinois, Maine, Kansas City (MO), Suffolk County (NY), and Wash...

In the past year, we have seen a large increase in the number of FCRA-based class-action lawsuits. A number of widely known companies such as Domino’s, K-Mart, ClosetMaid, Disney, CVS, and Whole Foods have been hit with lawsuits claiming they did not meet their requirements under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). The three main areas of FCRA being placed under scrutiny are the employers’ neglect in properly providing the proper FCRA Summary of Rights, utilizing a compliant Disclosure and Authorization forms, and the use (or neglected use) of Pre-Adverse and Adverse Action letters. Here is information at  Hire Image   website on how to stay in compliance with FCRA requirements, and some highlights of cases where non-compliance is alleged. •  The FCRA summary of rights must be provided to the applicant before performing a background check and also if/when a Pre-Adverse action letter is sent to the applicant.  In order to stay in compliance with the FCRA, thi...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation keeps a listing of identifying information taken from fingerprints submitted voluntarily by various criminal justice agencies in connection with arrests, or relating to naturalization or military service. Many employers are under the impression that this FBI identification database is the “gold standard” in background screening. In reality, the background screening community considers the FBI’s database as a tool to be used but not reliable enough as a single source for a background check. This is because the FBI database is simply not a thorough-enough resource for background screening. Having been arrested and fingerprinted may not help your job candidate land a job, but if such experiences did not result in a criminal conviction, such critical disposition information is likely to be missing from a person’s “rap sheet.”  Thus, relying on the FBI database alone doesn’t paint the whole picture. According to a 2006 Department of Justice (DOJ...