If you are hiring someone shouldn’t you have the right to know whether or not they were convicted of a felony? Not according to San Francisco’s elected officials who believe that asking someone if they are a felon is an unacceptable bias against the “formerly incarcerated” (the new PC term for ex-cons).

The nonbinding resolution passed by SF’s supervisors urges the city and county to delete the question about prior convictions from public employment applications. The measure was promoted by a Bay Area group of ex-cons called All of Us or None who have been calling for exactly this type of resolution. They were no doubt as surprised that someone actually took them up on it, but that’s San Francisco for you.

We at Independent Sources are all for the rights of the formerly incarcerated but not at the expense of hiring managers who might find the fact that the person they are hiring to work in the pharmacy spent 9 years in jail for peddling drugs or that the person applying for the bank teller job has been arrested 3 times for identity theft. Also, since this measure is not going to impact the number of jobs created all it means is that a never-incarcerated person might lose out to a formerly-incarcerated person and we’re not sure how society is any better off.

If San Francisco’s Supervisors really want to make an impact they would think about how to stimulate job growth and/or removing barriers from those looking to add employees.

It should be noted that the resolution that the supervisors passed is non-binding and does not apply to private employers. However, history has shown us that the next step could easily be amending the resolution to make it binding as well as apply to any private sector firm that wants to do business with the county or city.

Of course even without the little checked box, hiring managers will figure out a way to ask questions to find the information that does not go against the resolution. For example don’t be surprised if during an interview you are asked questions like:

• “Do you know how to make a shank?”
• “Can you explain this gap in your resume of 5 to 15 years?”
• “Why did you relocate to Lompoc in 1995?”
• “What’s that GPS bracelet doing around your ankle?”

The Supervisors hope that this is a blue print for other municipalities to follow across the country. Doubtful. It is far more likely that the other cities will encourage their formerly-incarcerated to relocate to San Francisco. The law of unintended consequences strikes again!

More on San Francisco not quite getting it here and here.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 12th, 2005 at 11:34 am by Insider and is filed under Politically Correct ... and stupid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.