It’s funny – the financial people say that they need to have a credit report in order to appropriately determine worthiness, the insurance people say they need it to determine the risk of a person in the industry, and employers need it to determine the worthiness of their potential employees, the video store needs it to determine if you pay a monthly fee or not, and government services needs it to determine some other things, the power company needs it to determine if you are worthy of their service, the phone company needs it to determine if you are worthy for phone services, the water company needs it to determine if you are worthy to have a drink of water….. I can go on for days…
The underlying fact is that they are determining the ability of a person based on credit history. Which is nearly like saying that they can determine the ability by the color of skin, or the sexual preference, or how skinny or fat they are, or what kind of handicap they have. What happens if they do not have a credit history? No job, no utilities, no services or no essentials.
If employers were really concerned about their company, they would take a look at their CEO’s. Golden Parachutes that bankrupt, setting up multiple accounts for laundering, or even lying about products and services to lock employees in. Let me ask anyone here: Who are you more likely to hire: The former CEO of Enron or one of the employees? The CEO went bankrupt, as did the employees; both of them have poor credit.
What about all of those dot-comers who were hired with a startup company that went bankrupt, and since they had stock in the company they lost everything? The point that I am making is that you can not use credit to determine employability. Why? While the employees are loyal to the company, the companies that I have mentioned showed how loyal they were to the employees by riding their backs directly into the ground. Is the employee at fault? A portion of their problems can be placed directly on their shoulders, however, unethical dealings by companies they work with can be to blame.
As well as the credit card companies that charge unreasonable rates, loan shark mortgage companies, and unethical cash until payday companies, and companies that pop-up out of no where and pitch a lot of schemes and sign you up for a lot of junk.
One scheme that I recently found is that our company sends out congratulatory letters to new companies based on the listings with the Secretary of State. We found that there are people out there who are creating new companies and reading down the phone book the name and address of unsuspecting people, and filing new corporation papers in the unsuspecting person?s name, then they are executing on those corporations. When they do something illegal, get sued, the person who gets nailed is not the people who filed the paperwork, but the unsuspecting people that are listed on the filing work.
What does that make me lead to believe? The people with the best credit are those who have scammed someone else. (Flaw in thinking) But in today?s world where identity theft is a problem that is not being contained or seriously examined at the government level, scams and schemes that rope people in, and the lack of ethics at the corporate level, I question the practice more than I welcome it. And I question the ethics of anyone who says that it has saved them time, money, peace of mind or is a good practice.