Criminal Records Part 1

Well, yes, but…other than THAT how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?

“I’ve got a few narcotics convictions, but other than that, I’d be a great driver employee.”

The talk today is about the “driver shortage.” It’s debated, cussed and denied—but it’s a fact that many motor carriers cannot hire enough drivers to drive all their trucks. One reason they can’t hire enough drivers is because they will not hire a driver if the driver has certain criminal offenses on his record.

This raises a question: The DOT requires companies to contact past employers, order driving records, verify physical fitness, demonstrate driving proficiency, verify the holding of a CDL—which requires testing to obtain—and send off certain applicant bodily fluids to government-approved laboratories for really close inspection. Why then, for the love of all that is good and decent, would a company mess around with criminal records?

While there are a lot of variations, motor carriers order criminal records for several main reasons:

• Profitability—pretty simple, a company believes ordering criminal records will be profitable because they will hire fewer drivers that do illegal things. These gains (for example, less theft) will outweigh the costs of ordering criminal records.
• Insurance—Aside from the profitability gains that may result, employers may order criminal records as insurance against hiring the catastrophic driver, the proverbial bad apple that threatens the business or costs the business hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal and personnel expenses.
• Canada—Some companies may need their drivers to occasionally go into Canada. Canada can deny entry to individuals with a criminal record.
• Gut Feelings—A business owner or manager hiring an apartment handyman with access to apartments decides he owes an obligation to his tenants to avoid hiring a predator. An accounting firm looks around his business at the people who work there and decides he wants to avoid hiring a violent felon. A motor carrier may want to avoid hiring a driver who will beat the tar out of his biggest client’s warehouse manager (even if he did have it coming), or assault his office staff who does the accounting, etc.

Of course, there are serious crimes and there are minor crimes and there are serious crimes that aren’t job related and thus, aren’t that serious in an employment context. There’s also the fact that an offense 20 years ago is not as significant as the same offense if it happened 1 year ago. Next month we’ll compare felonies and misdemeanors, arrests and convictions and discuss job-relatedness of criminal records.

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