Worker loses job due to false background screening information

Kevin Hutchinson, 32, of North Philadelphia, is one of many job-seekers out there, keen to be part of the workforce but suffering due to the current economic climate. Unfortunately for him, Hutchinson has recently fallen victim to what some experts say is a disturbing consequence of background screening – erroneous information gathered by careless or unscrupulous data brokers. Having been convicted for simple assault, harassment and related offenses years ago, he was sure to put it on his job application in September at GameStop. So he was stunned when, after getting the job and working for a month, his manager called him into his office and asked if anything was on his record that he hadn’t disclosed. “He said, ‘If there was, would you be surprised?’ ” Hutchinson recalled. “I told him I’d be shocked, and a few minutes later, they fired me for nondisclosure of information.” Hutchinson said he repeatedly asked whether he was being fired for the 2002 charges. He said his manager emphatically told him, “No,” but refused to tell him why he was being fired. Hutchinson said he never received a copy of his background check or a termination letter from GameStop. Through another job application, he found out that a background check on him said he had been convicted in 1996 of felony cocaine possession in Gloucester County, Va., and sentenced to 10 years in prison. “I have never even been to Gloucester County, Va.,” Hutchinson said. “Back then, I was still in high school.” After receiving the report, Hutchinson called GIS to dispute the information. More than two weeks later, the company cleared his criminal-background check of the false felony-cocaine charge, according to GIS records he received. On his own, Hutchinson had his fingerprints taken at the Pennsylvania State Police’s Belmont Barracks and sent them to the Virginia State Police to demonstrate that he was not the man on their records, he said. “GIS said they dealt with it, but I didn’t want to leave any stone unturned,” he said. GameStop, where Hutchinson said the bosses knew about his misdemeanors when they hired him, refused to hire him back after the felony-cocaine charge was cleared. “They told me I had to reapply to see if I could get another position with the company,” he said. “Why should I have to reapply when you let me go off of false pretenses? You didn’t even give me a chance to explain.” This left Hutchinson once again unemployed, and feeling let down by organizations and processes that are there to protect, not punish, members of society. Unfortunately, for Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C., Hutchinson’s is a familiar story. “Background checks are pretty routine now, even for positions that don’t require trust that they manage money or things of value,” she said. “There’s no way to know that the error rates are not off the charts.” Coney said many people may never know about an inaccurate background check, especially if an employer never gave them a copy. If a person never got a job, he or she simply may have assumed that someone else was more qualified, she said. “For every one person you hear this happens to, there may be thousands of people who don’t know this happens,” she said. “This the worst-case scenario because you’re not going to be brought to trial to argue your innocence because you’ve already been found guilty and you don’t even know it.”

What can we learn from this? For job-seekers, be sure to follow up on your job applications; for employers – find yourself a reliable background screening company, and understand that such human errors do sometimes occur.