Doing Their Best to Wipe Out Jobs

One thing you have to say about this bunch in power in DC, they sure do hate for people to be employed and working!  (the better to enslave you with, my dear).  There's the rather consistent 6000 regulations every 90 days from Regulations.gov (although they went over that in a push before the election), the idea that the answer to every question is "raise taxes", shutting down the coal industry, tying up the big Keystone pipeline project with endless red tape, the 99 weeks of unemployment, and so much more.

The latest is a ruling from the Equal Employment Opportunity Center that an employer can't consider an applicant's criminal record while deciding employment.  Most companies do a criminal background check before hiring employees, but the new policies discourage this by having severe penalties if the background influences hiring.

If a background check discloses a criminal offense, the EEOC expects a company to do an intricate "individualized assessment" that will somehow prove that it has a "business necessity" not to hire the ex-offender (or that his offense disqualifies him for a specific job). Former EEOC General Counsel Donald Livingston, in testimony in December to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, warned that employers could be considered guilty of "race discrimination if they choose law abiding applicants over applicants with criminal convictions" unless they conduct a comprehensive analysis of the ex-offender's recent life history.

In essence, the EEOC is all but establishing "criminal offender" as one of the protected groups that get to sue over any problem, real or imagined.  By threatening legal action against businesses for rejecting applicants for legitimate security reasons

The EEOC's new regime leaves businesses in a Catch-22. As Todd McCracken of the National Small Business Association recently warned: "State and federal courts will allow potentially devastating tort lawsuits against businesses that hire felons who commit crimes at the workplace or in customers' homes. Yet the EEOC is threatening to launch lawsuits if they do not hire those same felons."

The EEOC is confident that its guidance will boost minority hiring, but studies published in the University of Chicago Legal Forum and the Journal of Law and Economics have found that businesses are much less likely to hire minority applicants when background checks are banned. As the majority of black and Hispanic job applicants have clean legal records, the new EEOC mandate may harm the very groups it purports to help.

Progressive policies "harm the very groups they purport to help" at a rate approaching 100%.  Add this to the list. 

I think I've said before that in Major Aerospace Company, where I work, most new hires are not brought in as employees.  With the exception of salaried "exempt" personnel (exempt from hourly labor law protection), new hires are contractors from one of the temporary agencies.  After six months or so, if the person demonstrates a good work ethic and is considered a good addition, an offer is made.   I can see this idea spreading, and many companies simply ending the practice of having long term employees, where they can. 

With the problems of Obamacare, the EEOC, EPA and all the other fed.gov agencies being intrusive no-so-silent partners, I can see businesses switching over to only working with contractors and having no employees.  Or they get much, much more selective about choosing employees.