UPDATE BELOW

Some job seekers who thought they had their criminal records sealed or believe arrest records won’t show up in a background check are often in for a rude awakening.

Turns out FBI data bases, and other public and private sources of information, can still turn up past missteps you thought weren’t in the public sphere, said Samuel Miller, a labor law attorney.

“A quarter of U.S. population has some record in FBI data base, and a large number may be situations where someone got fingerprinted or held in jail for a few hours but never got prosecuted,” he said.

Today, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is holding a meeting in Washington where it will announce new guidelines for the use of using criminal background checks in employment, and what they propose could help some workers. But the issue of bogus information, or information that was supposed to be out of the public’s eye for ever, may be hard to resolve. (more…)

I’ve written extensively about the lack of women board members in Corporate America but I’m especially peeved this morning about the problem.

Turns out the guys who sit on boards today — and we’re talking about 95 percent men who hold these powerful positions — aren’t there because they’re any great shakes. In fact, quite a few of them are actually unprincipled.

There’s a great piece in the New York Times by Andrew Ross Sorkin today titled “‘Tainted,’ But Sheltered On Boards,” that looks at why some men who’ve been disgraced in their fields for a host of reasons are still sitting on the nation’s top boards.

These are seats that someone with integrity should hold, and I would argue that these bad boys should be replaced with good girls. Clearly, women have proven themselves as potentially more ethical than men when it comes to ethics and business. (more…)

There’s nothing worse than getting close to a job offer but getting nada.

Recently I wrote a story on a new job interviewing phenomenon I call the interview odyssey. Applicants are put through six, seven, even ten interviews for one job. They’re forced to meet with everyone from the CEO to HR manager to the guy in the mailroom…not that there’s anything wrong with meeting the guy in the mailroom. But all this work often ends up in disappointment.

One woman I interviewed for the interview-odyssey story just emailed me and said after endless interviews at yet another company, she didn’t get the gig, yet again.

“Well Eve after 9 interviews, for that one same job, I received my rejection notice for the Second Company. It was preceded by a request for feedback on what I thought of their interview process (I wasn’t about to touch that one).

“So I am back where I started, facing unemployment come the second week in May. As I mentioned, I am an adjunct teacher for a community college, and for a local University, and the summer work will be nil or next to it.

“I need to re-evaluate, after coming so close with two employers!”

My first reaction to her saying she needs to reevaluate her situation was why? At least she made it to the interview process. So many job seekers never even hear from hiring managers after they send their resumes into the cyber black hole.

But I reached out to an expert in recruiting to see what she thought of this situation and she actually had a name for people like the perpetual interviewee.

“In our business, we call these people ‘bridesmaids’ because they never seem to be able to progress to the final stage,” said Beth Gilfeather, CEO and Founder, Seven Step Recruiting. (more…)

Derrick Morgan, who has cerebral palsy, worked as a manager for a California McDonald’s since 2006 but when new management took over things changed drastically for him.

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission the new owners of the Oakhurst restaurant, Alia Corp., illegally demoted Morgan and forced him the quit.

“This is a case where the company illegally stripped a well-qualified worker of his ability to earn a living due to misperceptions about his disability,” said Anna Park, regional attorney for the EEOC’s Los Angeles District Office.

Clearly there’s a problem in this country when it comes to employing individuals with disabilities. The unemployment rate for this group in March was 15.2 percent, almost double to the 8.1 percent rate for those without disabilities. And some experts have told me they suspect the joblessness among those with disabilities is much higher because many leave the labor force out of frustration.

And charges of disability discrimination filed with the EEOC have been rising steadily for the last decades, hitting a record 25,742 last year.

Morgan’s case goes to show that some employers are cool with employing disabled workers and some just don’t get it. Indeed, he was a valued employee to the previous owner.

It turns out there is a recipe that works when recruiting, hiring and keeping disabled workers, and a recent study sheds light on that approach. (more…)

Here we go again. It’s a redux of the working-mother-versus-stay-at-home mother fight, and in this battle there is only one outcome — women lose.

In this corner is one political operative, Ann Romney, and in this corner is another political operative, Hilary Rosen. They’re arguing on Twitter and all over the media about who has struggled most, but you know mommies out there, they’re ultimate goal is political gain, not gains for women overall.

If they really cared about women and their economic concerns they wouldn’t be using working moms as pawns in their games; they’d be spending more energy tweeting about stuff like this.

* The pay gap between men and women. My colleague at Today.com Allison Linn wrote a great article today on the disparity in pay among the sexes across the nation. In Romney’s hometown of Michigan women make 75 cents or less on the dollar to what men make, and in Rosen’s New Jersey hometown women make about 79 cents on the dollar to men.

* The powerful old boys networks that make no apologies for keeping women out of their clubs, and corporate heads who play along because they don’t want to rock their cushy boats.

* Moms and dads should be screaming about the fact that the United States is one of the only industrialized nations in the world without mandatory paid family and sick leave.

* And let’s not forget the fact that women make up less than 20 percent of the board rooms and corner offices jobs in Corporate America.

All these issues should outshine this tired-old debate pitting mothers against each other. It’s a diversion. This is a tactic of war gals and we can’t see it because we’re not the ones who typically take nations to war. But we better start learning wartime maneuvering.

If we keep fighting the mommy wars we’ll remain casualties — underpaid and unequal.

I’ve been covering labor issues for a long time but yesterday I realized how much I still have to learn about worker rights.

I wrote a story about a gay man who claims he was fired from the Library of Congress after his employer found out his was gay, and during the research of the story I came across a disturbing reality. If indeed they fired this guy because he was gay, he has little to no recourse to fight the action.

Why? Because sexual orientation is largely not a protected category in the workplace, either the government workplace or the private sector. I knew their rights were limited, but I didn’t realize how limited. The lawyer in the Library of Congress’ case said he’s going to fight the case based on religious discrimination, which is clearly covered under labor laws, but he’s not going to push the sexual orientation issue because it would get his client no remedy for the injustice he alleges.

Since the Library of Congress is part of the federal government I found this even more shocking because that would mean the government can basically discriminate against gay workers.

When I asked a spokeswoman at the library about the case, she offered this in a statement:

“Library of Congress employees, like all employees in the federal government, have protection against workplace discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.”

Well folks, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not cover sexual orientation. It only “prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.”

When I got off the phone I called one of the top labor law firms that focuses on government workers, Tully Rinckey, to find out for sure what rights gay workers had. Alas, the news was grim for government and private sector employees. (more…)

If you’ve read this blog for a while you probably know how I feel about top ten lists. They’re funny to read but I try not to take them too seriously.

I’m taking that sentiment to heart this morning because reporter made the list of worst jobs in the country and while my job can stink sometimes I really do love it.

“Many jobs in the media are characterized by high stress, short deadlines, long hours and a poor hiring outlook,” explains Tony Lee, publisher of CareerCast.com’s 2012 Jobs Rated Report. “Despite these poor working conditions, competition is steep for what jobs remain after massive consolidation and layoffs in the media industry.”

Yada yada yada…

So, I’m going to include the top ten worst and best jobs here, as decided by CareerCast, but please don’t let it get you too down or too up if you’re gig made the list. (more…)

I had a dream last night that IBM CEO Virginia Rometty told the Grand Poobah of the Masters Tournament to take his green blazer and shove it.

You see the golf tournament, considered the most prestigious in the country, is held at the Augusta National Golf Club and guess what, that club doesn’t accept female members.This is a tough situation for the Club and for Rometty because traditionally IBM’s top dog has been accepted into the club and ends up wearing the organization’s famous green blazer.

All four of the last IBM CEOs were offered membership, according to a Wall Street Journal article today. But the newly minted chief executive Rometty won’t be able to don it because breasts are not allowed.

Rometty isn’t commenting on the matter, and word is she’ll be attending since IBM is one of the event’s key sponsors, but here’s where the few women in power can make a difference. Instead of attending and faking a smile, she should pull the company’s long-time sponsorship and tell Masters “you’re not the master of me anymore.” (more…)

There have been undercurrents of weight discrimination in the workplace for years, but a Texas hospital decided to go anti-fat full throttle.

A Texas newspaper uncovered the story recently reporting about a fat-adverse Texas hospital — Citizens Medical Center — and it’s unheard of policy of refusing to hire anyone with a body mass index of more than 35.

The policy, according to The Texas Tribune, states:

… an employee’s physique “should fit with a representational image or specific mental projection of the job of a healthcare professional,” including an appearance “free from distraction” for hospital patients.

“The majority of our patients are over 65, and they have expectations that cannot be ignored in terms of personal appearance,” hospital chief executive David Brown said in an interview. “We have the ability as an employer to characterize our process and to have a policy that says what’s best for our business and for our patients.”

The hospital’s policy may cause outrage, but it’s an extreme example of an obesity bias that has been percolating in the nation’s workforces, starting with seemingly benign measures such as encouraging workers to walk at lunch. (more…)

There’s been a lot of talk in recent days that the Supreme Court may strike down health care reform, but killing the law in its entirety will hurt working mothers across the country.

Tucked into reform was a new provision known as the Breast Feeding Act and it’s already helping to make breast-feeding at work easier.

The Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law in March 2010, amended the Fair Labor Standards Act, and for the first time employers are now federally mandated to provide women with breaks and a place to breastfeed. The final rules regarding the law have not been finalized, but that hasn’t stopped the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour division’s enforcers from going after employers who don’t make accommodations for working moms who want to pump.

This one provision in the law was among the few that got bipartisan support and it would clearly turn back the clock on a key advancement for women in the workplace if it went down with the health-reform ship.

How are the justices on the high court leaning? There was one mention by a justice I found from the recent hearing about the act. (more…)