Posted on 01/19/2007 9:49:19 PM PST by FLOutdoorsman
Minorities are starting to fight employers over the use of credit history in hiring.
Lisa Bailey worked for five months at Harvard University as a temp entering donations into a database. When the university made the job a salaried position, Ms. Bailey, who is black, saw a chance to lift herself out of dead-end jobs.
Bailey's superiors encouraged her to apply, she says, but turned her down after discovering her bad credit history.
Bailey, with her lawyer, has lodged a complaint against Harvard charging racial discrimination. The reason: Studies show that minorities are more likely to have bad credit, but credit problems have not been shown to negatively affect job performance.
Some privacy and minority advocates are now seeing credit as a civil rights issue as minorities start to fight employers and insurers who base decisions on credit histories. Their effort could slow the near doubling in credit checks by employers in the past decade, which impacts millions of Americans who are struggling with debt.
"It's definitely a civil rights issue because of the growing use of credit reports and credit scores for hiring, renting an apartment, insurance, and the fact that people of color have not been integrated into the credit scoring system as much as traditional, white, middle-class America," says Evan Hendricks, author of "Credit Scores & Credit Reports: How the System Really Works, What You Can Do."
In a 2004 study involving 2 million people, the Texas Department of Insurance found that blacks have an average credit score roughly 10 percent to 35 percent worse than whites; Hispanics have scores 5 percent to 25 percent worse than whites.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
I don't think it's a racial or a civil rights issue. I am sick of the power credit reports have over us.
It is a shrewd move by insurance companies to use credit checks and it is becoming more common. Good credit risks tend to be more responsible and therefore better insurance risks.
A credit rating is an individual thing. A person of any color can have a good or bad one. I would say tough to these critics, but politics and the nanny state may say otherwise.
More Big Brother coming soon to all of us.
I'll agree with that.
If I ran the world, the management of credit institutions would get monthly mailings containing large packets of information in small print explaining in legalese how their job duties have changed.
And every time they are 5 minutes late for work, they get docked a day's pay.
This is PC run amok! If you worked hard to maintain a business would you lend money to a person who has a record of a deadbeat? A credit history is also a gauge of a person's personal responsibility. What next - no criminal background checks for blacks because they have higher crime rates? The inmates are running the asylum!!
I wonder if they do a credit check before you go on welfare?
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They did a credit check on her because she was in a position that dealt with money. Theoretically someone with good credit would be less likely to find ways to dip into the till than someone with bad.
The thing that irks me is that every time someone runs a credit check on you it lowers your score.
If you apply for government positions, they run a credit check on you. Most smart businesses do this. If an employee has a bad credit history and owes everyone and their brother, then they are far more liable to cave in to bribes by other businesses and in the case of the feds, other governments.
Why is everything in this world now about race? I alway thought blacks didn't want us to look at them as black but they keep reminding us.
I don't buy anything on credit, I have no credit history ...therefore I am a bad credit risk because "they" don't know me...even tho my household income exceeds $55,000...
If the inmates have the political power it will work that way.
It true that the same argument has been made against territories in insurance ratings. The critics would say minoritites tend to live in particular areas and therefore are singled out. But the use of territories has held because if a minority lives in a cheaper territory they will obtain the cheaper rate.
I am sure the people who use credit checks will fight to continue and some of them like the insurance companies have the resources to make a fight of it.
Please don't confuse the power of inmates with top-down legal innovations from the Commies. We can't get to a Free Republic without understanding who is destroying it.
You usually see this sort of thing in big, bureaucratic organizations where all the room for judgment and common sense has been administratively purged.
They use credit checks to set insurance rates too.
Having good credit get you a discount at most auto insurance companies.
People with good credit seldom set their car on fire because they can't make the payments.
Comment parsed. </unfair of course>
No mention of Asians, I noticed.
I'm thinking that they have great credit. So it's not Politically Correct to mention them in this context.
Yes, but I think property insurance is - and insurance companies - a different kind of cat. Here in FL we have a big scandal with unjustified increases because of our hurricanes. Our new Republican governor, Charley Crist, is going to conduct a thorough investigation. I was referring to the routine individual credit checks that have always been a part of all business and commerce.
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