Erle Pierce, Sheehan Phinney Capitol Group
With public access to an individual's private life being so prevalent nowadays through portals such as Facebook, several bills have been introduced this year that address the issues of employer access to employees', both existing and potential, social media sites, credit reports, and criminal background checks. The people you may hire are winning.
With strong backing of the AFL-CIO and other labor organizations, last week the House passed HB 414. This bill as introduced by Rep. Kathy Rogers (d) Merrimack 28, would limit employers from requesting or requiring employees or prospective employees to provide passwords or access to private social media accounts. It would allow employers to adopt policies governing and monitoring use of company-owned electronic equipment and does permit employers to conduct certain investigations consistent with state and federal laws, rules and regulations. The bill now heads over to the Senate for perhaps more work that will clearly outline an employer's rights when employees use company-owned equipment to access personal websites and email.
HB357 takes this initiative one step further by prohibiting an employer from using credit history or any other information available from a consumer reporting agency, including criminal background checks, when making employment decisions. This bill, introduced solely by Rep. Robert Cushing (d) Rockingham 21, was drastically amended in the House Labor committee and the amendment was adopted by a large margin. The committee could not reach a majority position on the amended bill. As a result, the bill went to the floor on Wednesday with no recommendation and deadlocked at 10-10.
The intent of the bill was to allow for those who were out of work for some time to be able to find employment even though their credit may have taken a hit during their period of unemployment. Several employers testified they do not utilize credit history in making employment decisions and while they agree job applicants should not fear discrimination, they want to preserve their right to hire the best people they can for the jobs available.
Other groups of employers believe that as long as there is workforce violence, workplace fraud, and workplace theft, there will always be a need to review the credit and criminal histories of certain job applicants. They went on to testify that passage of the HB357 as introduced could make workplaces in New Hampshire more susceptible to crime, violence and fraud.
In House floor action on Wednesday, a motion to table the bill failed and the chair of the Labor Committee, Rep. Andrew White (d) Grafton 13, introduced a floor amendment that exempted many types of businesses from having to follow the new law when hiring for certain positions. The newly amended bill passed on a roll call vote of 213 to 144.
The bill now heads to the Senate for more work as legislation containing many exceptions often leads to the question of why is the bill needed at all?
