Asking about felony convictions
sandyq
10 Posts
When an applicant leaves their application with me, I review it and ask any pertinent questions about their abilities to perform the position they apply for. We have a question about felony convictions on our application. Is it legal for me to ask what they were convicted of? Since we are a construction company and some of our contracts are with schools, we can't have a convicted child molester working on those contracts. This would not be information I would share with their foreman unless it would prevent the employee, once hired, from working on a particular job.
Comments
Depends on what kind of an organization your with. IF your with a non-profit I can give you some suggestions on getting backgournds done for free.
He is still being detained. My question is, can we suspend him pending investigation and charges or because of the previous reported and documented charge can we termintate him. Many feel he would be a threat to others especially in light of the recent charges. please let me know you thoughts on the matter asap. Thanks for your help.
Donna Lee Lange
HR Manager
My understanding from your post is that this person is still being held in jail. Is this correct? If this is then I would let your attendance policy (assuming you have one) take care of this for you. In my experience with individuals being in jail, I have NEVER given an employee a leave of absence and excuse them from work while they are in lockup. They receive the same occurrences, etc. as other employees that miss work. Once they reach the maximum level, they are terminated. This happens regardless of what they are being held for.
The one caution I would make is that this person has not been convicted of anything at this point so I wouldn't terminated based simply on the fact that they have been arrested.
One last thing, if you do terminate due to attendance, they will probably get unemployment. I have tried several times in my state to "fight" their unemployment and have never been successful in this type of situations.
Good luck!
Margaret Morford
theHRedge
615-371-8200
[email]mmorford@mleesmith.com[/email]
[url]http://www.thehredge.net[/url]