The Identity Theft and Employment Law Reform Act

By Neil H. Schubert

6-2-2010 (2007, 2008)

(unfinished draft)

The purpose of this legislation would be to protect persons from identity fraud and theft related to employment, landlord and tenant, and contracts. Identity theft has increased exponentially since private companies began using identification information like social security numbers.

The act would make it illegal for persons other than the government and banks to use or ask for a social security number.
The act would prohibit non-government agencies and government contractors from using social security numbers. This includes operators,owners, and contractors of computer databases.
The act would make it a criminal offense to ask for a social security number in a contract or other legal document, with some exceptions.
The act would make it illegal for any entity to create a replacement identifier for a social security number.
It would allow employers to transmit a social security number to the government for the purpose of identification of citizenship and tax withholding, but would prohibit its use or reproduction by any other party.

Employment law:

Prohibited Activities by Employers

For the past 10 years, I have been identifying a number of civil rights issues involving employers. The activities include a large number of methods used by employers to circumvent state and federal laws, methods which are similar in method to tax evasion. These activities have cause a great burden to society, and a burden to government, since unemployed persons are most often supported by government aid. I support capitalism, but the free market hasn't worked, so now it's time to regulate.

Additional discrimination Rights:

Under this act, it:

Would be illegal to discriminate against any persons for anything not substantially related to the job being sought or currently engaged in.
Would add discrimination based on Marital Status, Financial Status, Income, and Children
Would establish that federal employment rights apply to all employees in the United States
Would make it illegal for employers to provide false or misleading information during interviews.
Would allow the federal government to do simple audits of employers to verify that laws aren't being broken
Would make means and methods used to circumvent state and federal employment law in a federal crime, punishable by a fine and a minimum of one year imprisonment.
Would make it illegal to steer persons to different positions based on sex, and pay different wages based on sex, or engage in activities that devalue persons of one sex in a company (AKA a pattern of write ups). (this is already covered, it just needs additional clarity)
Would be illegal to discriminate based on a person's work history of another employer(s).
Would be illegal to discriminate on the basis of a related or unrelated party of the employee, next door neighbor, or unknown entity, or the data contained in a computer database not related to citizenship. The only qualifying database related to citizenship would be operated by the Federal Government.
Would be illegal to discriminate on the basis of a person's address.

Prohibitions On Job Applications

It would be illegal under this act to use electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, means to pre-disqualify persons applying for a job. These include methods such as scanning resumes for misspelled words, attempting to cross verify information against other information, and using a telephone number as a basis for disqualification. Other examples of pre-disqualification, include exclusion of applications who have information that is not completely filled in. Sometimes people do not have information. Sometimes a company will try to match a telephone number to an address, or run an address against a database. This would now be illegal.
It would be illegal under this act for employers to request information about a persons previous pay and previous employers. Originally, the purpose of this was to simply verify the identity of the person. However, what has been happening is that employers are using this to degrade the wages of existing jobs, and disqualify persons who may choose a different profession. It would be illegal under this act for employers to obtain this information from a job seeker, and or from a third party database. This would greatly protect persons identities, and would substantially reduce the amount of paperwork associated with a job application.
Information on job applications and resumes would be protected from reproduction and re-publication, under this act. It would be illegal for employers or those acting as contractors to employers to make any application information available to a third party. Applicants would automatically be opted-out.
An employer would not be allowed to require an applicant or job seeker to enter a contract prior to their contract for work. (this would put a stop to those “by clicking here you agree.....)”
As in many states, under this act, contracts for work would terminate at the end of employment, and all provisions that extend beyond the contract for work would terminate on termination, unless the employer chooses to pay wages in full for the extended period of the contract. This is to prevent employers who hire employees under a contract with a non-compete clause, then fire them, so as to use this as a means to take qualified employees away from their competitors.

Sexual Harassment

The Employment Law reform act would amend and make null, any existing state and federal laws related to Sexual Harassment in the Workplace, and would replace it with a new definition.

Under this act, sexual harassment would be defined as the use of sexual favors, sexual advances, or conduct similar in nature to increase wages, seniority status, rank or management position, or to gain unfair exception or preference in the workplace; or as the basis of termination, decrease in management position, seniority status, rank, wages, or discriminatory non exception or preference in the workplace. This modification would be directly dependent on the passage of the above anti-discrimination rights.

Under this act, employers and their insurers would be immune to civil and criminal lawsuits related to the sexual conduct of its employees and management, unless any of the above conditions are met. If a person or persons wants to sue for sexual harassment or related activities not defined in this act, the lawsuits cannot include the employer or its insurers as a defendant. The government would be responsible for protecting and providing due process to persons who are experiencing any of the items defined in the above underlined definition.

Far too many people are using sexual harassment as a means to extort employers. While many of these employees do have a right, I am finding that government agencies and lawyers are using sexual harassment as the cover-all when an employee is being extorted or wrongfully terminated. Adding anti-discrimination rights corrects these problems.

Background Checks:

In order to conduct a background check on a person involved in an employment situation, employers would be required to have liability insurance to cover damages resulting in law violations and calumny (libel/slander/defamation). Under this act, a person seeking employment or an employee cannot be compelled, required, or asked to enter into a contract with the employer or a third party in order to conduct a background check. The results of a background check would be not be returned to employers directly.

Instead, such information would be returned to a state or federal agency which governs employment, and that agency would register the information by scanning and dating it electronically (photo) and that information would then be sent or shown to the employee for verification, prior to being sent to the employer or prospective employer. Upon request by the employee or person seeking employment, the background check information could be removed or destroyed by the agency, but this would discouraged. The information contained in these records could not be searched by or disclosed to any government agency or private entity, and could only be searched by the state or federal agency that governs employment, for the purpose of investigating employment complaints.

The purpose of this would be to identify fraud and alterations of records, identity theft, and slander by an anonymous third party. In other words, keeping a snapshot of a background check would allow persons to show that their identity has been stolen by a criminal, or that the background check was done on the wrong person. This would also help identify fraud and tampering in government records or records of third party database companies. It can also be used to identify cases in which employers select specific background check companies on “certain individuals”. It also could be used by prospective employees to show a pattern and practice of an activity prohibited by law.

Credit Checks:

Under this act, it would be illegal for employers to obtain credit reports or reports containing financial or medical information, on employees or prospective employees. It would be illegal to obtain data containing summarized opinions of a person's character and mode of living, as well as numeric scores of a person. It would also be against the law to discriminate against any person who does not engage in credit activities or has no records of credit, or who's records cannot be verified.

It is also prohibited by this act to engage in any activity used to circumvent the above statements.

The reasoning behind this is that a person who does not have a job or a source of income cannot improve their credit rating, nor obtain credit. If persons are having financial problems, they need a better, higher paying job to improve their situation, not the opposite. Some people simply do not use credit.

The result of this activity has been that persons are discriminated against based on their credit rating, and are unable to pay their debts because they don't have a good job; They end up filing bankruptcy, or do not pay their debts and eventually end up taking money from the government, starting their own business, or committing crimes or selling drugs and contraban, and similar activity. All of these cause a great burden on the government, as well as the taxpayers.

Under this act, it would be illegal to discriminate against people based on financial status, as stated above.

Discrimination Based on Activities Outside of Work

In the United States of America, our freedom is part of our country's basic design. The Constitution establishes that we have the right to engage in the pursuit of happiness. The First Amendment was enacted to protect Americans right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

However, in recent times, there have been a number of cases, often publicized in the news, that involve persons who are being discriminated against based on their rights as Americans. These include political discussion, free practice of religion, expressing their views on websites, blogs, and other public and non-public electronic sites. Some of this activity may be inciteful, mean, hateful, or none of the above. Some of it may be adult in nature, some of it may be completely political, and some of it may be religious based. However, congress shall make no law prohibiting the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press. And “congress” is the will of the people.

The actions taken by many of these employers are really crimes against society. Based on the constitution, people should not fear engaging in speech because they could be fired from their job. This is really the same concept as a dictatorship, only this is private corporations using their money to control society. This is really the same setup they have in China, large corporations running the government, controlling the people.

This act would prohibit any employer or person associated with an employer, or person who is a party to a contract, to engage in discrimination based on activities, outside of work.

Enforcement of Existing Laws

Although many employers are not aware of this, when you decide to spy on your employees by searching for them on websites like My Space and Facebook, or hiring a third party to do so, you are using their published information for business purposes. Even if a legal copyright has not been filed, written and photographic works published by individuals are protected by Copyright Law!

Users of these websites are bound by a contract between their users and the sites, and engaging in activity to harass or terminate an employee based on their envoking provisions of a contract they are engaged in is technically interfering with a contract. Both the site owners and their users may have the right to sue you for interfering with their contract. I am not a lawyer, but if I was, I would take this route.

More to come!