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<DIV><FONT size=2><SPAN class=maintitle><B><FONT size=5>Unemployed need not
apply, some companies saying</FONT></B></SPAN>
<P align=justify><SPAN class=abody><B>By Tony Pugh</B></SPAN><SPAN class=abody>
<BR><BR>McClatchy</SPAN><SPAN class=abody> <BR><BR>WASHINGTON – As if finding
work weren’t hard enough already, a federal agency warns that some employers are
excluding jobless workers from consideration</SPAN><SPAN class=abody> for
openings.</SPAN><SPAN class=abody> The practice has surfaced in electronic and
print postings with language such as “unemployed applicants will not be
considered” or “must be currently employed.” Some ads use time thresholds to
exclude applicants who’ve been unemployed longer than six months or a
year.<BR><BR>Evidence of the practice has been mostly anecdotal, and information
about how widespread it may be is sketchy.</SPAN><SPAN class=abody>
<BR><BR></SPAN></P>
<DIV id=continuationAfter name="continuationAfter"><SPAN class=abody>But with
unemployment at 9 percent and millions of people struggling to find jobs, the
practice has caught the attention of regulators, lawmakers and advocates for the
unemployed. </SPAN><BR><BR><SPAN class=abody>“At a moment when we all should be
doing whatever we can to open up job opportunities to the unemployed, it is
profoundly disturbing that the trend of deliberately excluding the jobless from
work opportunities is on the rise,” said Christine Owens, the executive director
of the National Employment Law Project. </SPAN><BR><BR><SPAN class=abody>Members
of Congress contacted the Department of Labor and the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission last year to see whether the practice violates federal
employment laws against discrimination. </SPAN><BR><BR><SPAN class=abody>While
the unemployed aren’t a protected class under civil rights laws, the practice
could be legally problematic if it has a disparate or discriminatory effect on
groups of job seekers who are subject to civil rights protections.
</SPAN><BR><BR><SPAN class=abody>In a public meeting Wednesday at EEOC
headquarters, several witnesses testified that excluding the unemployed from job
openings could disproportionately affect African-Americans, Hispanics, people
with disabilities and older workers – all federally protected groups whose
jobless rates are well above the U.S. average. </SPAN><BR><BR><SPAN
class=abody>Blacks and Hispanics are particularly vulnerable, said William
Spriggs, the Labor Department’s assistant secretary for policy, because they
represent a large share of unemployed workers and a smaller portion of those
with jobs. </SPAN><BR><BR><SPAN class=abody>“When employers exclude the
unemployed from the applicant pool, they are more likely to be excluding Latinos
and African- Americans,” Spriggs testified. </SPAN><BR><BR><SPAN
class=abody>Several examples of discriminatory help-wanted ads were offered: a
Texas electronics company said online that it would “not consider/review anyone
NOT currently employed regardless of the reason”; an ad for a restaurant manager
position in New Jersey said applicants must be employed; a phone manufacturer’s
job announcement said “No Unemployed Candidates Will Be Considered At All,”
according to Helen Norton, associate professor at the University of Colorado
School of Law. </SPAN><BR><BR><SPAN class=abody>Most seem to agree that the
overwhelming majority of job postings don’t contain such language. James Urban,
a partner at Jones Day law firm in Pittsburgh who counsels large employers,
testified that he’s never dealt with an employer who wouldn’t hire the jobless.
</SPAN><BR><BR><SPAN class=abody>Listings that exclude unemployed applicants
would violate terms-of-use policies against discrimination at Monster.com, which
posts hundreds of thousands of job openings. “We would flag that as a violation
of our policy,” company spokesman Matthew Henson said. He said the website
screened listings for such problems. </SPAN><BR><BR><SPAN class=abody>Spriggs
said the problem might still occur behind closed doors, without the explicit
language. That’s because employers are looking for ways to cut through large
numbers of applications quickly. On average, there are nine job applicants for
every two openings, he said. </SPAN><BR><BR><SPAN class=abody>Others suggested
the practice reflects a bias that workers who were laid off aren’t the most
talented. </SPAN><BR><BR><SPAN class=abody>Joyce Bender, the CEO of Bender
Consulting Services and an advocate for people with disabilities, testified that
when she worked as a job recruiter, she often was asked to hire people from the
competition rather than qualified unemployed applicants. She said workers with
disabilities were having an even tougher job search because of this avoidance.
</SPAN><BR><BR><SPAN class=abody>While jobless applicants might have “skills
that are stale or obsolete” compared with employed candidates, screening them
out isn’t effective because it limits the pool of qualified workers, said Fernan
Cepero, the state director of the New York State Society for Human Resource
Management. He said the practice probably wasn’t widespread because “the stakes
involved are too high for that.” </SPAN><BR><BR><SPAN class=abody>But Owens of
the National Employment Law Project said her group routinely heard from older
workers who’d been rejected for consideration because they weren’t employed.
</SPAN><BR><BR><SPAN class=abody>A 53-year-old Illinois woman who was laid off
after 19 years as an information technology supervisor said a recruiter wouldn’t
send her on a job interview when he realized she hadn’t worked for a year. A
44-year-old woman lost out on a pharmaceutical sales position because the job
required that she be currently employed in the industry or have left it within
six months. </SPAN><BR><BR><SPAN class=abody>Owens said that under the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, it was
illegal for employers to use practices that “limit, segregate or classify”
individuals in ways that limited or denied employment opportunities based on
race, gender, color, religion, ethnicity or age. </SPAN><BR><BR><SPAN
class=abody><SPAN style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Tribune Washington bureau
contributed to this report.</SPAN> </SPAN></DIV></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>