Tell TransUnion to stop selling credit reports to employers!

As state legislators across the country have stood up against hiring practices that have a discriminatory impact, TransUnion has led the credit reporting industry in defending the use of credit reports in employment.

The Chicago Tribune reported: "In Illinois, legislators said privately held TransUnion twice attempted to introduce language into a proposed Employee Credit Privacy Act that would have rendered it meaningless."

The New York Times has also noted that even as TransUnion has worked against these bills it has admitted that it doesn’t have "any research to show any statistical correlation between what's in somebody's credit report and their job performance or their likelihood to commit fraud."

Now, civil rights groups, consumer advocates, labor unions and others across the country are calling on TransUnion to change course by stopping its sale of credit reports to employers.

Read their letter to TransUnion here and see the list of signatories here.

Join them by signing on to the letter below!

To:
• Penny Pritzker, Chairman of TransUnion
• Siddharth Mehta, CEO of TransUnion
• John A. Canning, Jr., Chairman of Madison Dearborn Capital Partners (51% owner of TransUnion)

Subject:

Your Letter:

With record numbers of Americans struggling to find work, TransUnion promotes credit history as a way to screen out job applicants. I'm calling on TransUnion to discontinue its sale of employment credit reports for four main reasons:

First, credit checks in hiring create a fundamental "Catch-22" for job applicants: you can't pay your bills because you've lost your job or your hours were cut, and now you can't get a job because you can't pay your bills.

Second, the use of credit in hiring has a discriminatory impact on African American and Latino job applicants. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has expressed concern that credit checks in employment may violate the Civil Rights Act, and has sued two employers over it.

Third, credit history does not predict job performance. The definitive study on this issue, presented to the American Psychological Association in 2003, concluded that credit history does not correlate with employee conduct.

Finally, credit reports are inaccurate. A 2007 Zogby poll reported that 37% of people surveyed found an error on their credit report, and half of these respondents reported that they could not easily fix the mistakes.

TransUnion has stated that credit reports are the "de facto economic passport for every individual in this country, whether you like it or not." I believe that hard work and dedication, not hiring tools with a discriminatory impact such as credit reports, should be the economic passport for working people.

John Canning

Chairman of Madison Dearborn Capital Partners

Siddharth “Bobby” Mehta

CEO of TransUnion

Penny Pritzker

Chairman of TransUnion

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Learn more about Credit Catch 22 by visiting our website at www.creditcatch22.org.

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