If you live within 25 miles of a Lowe’s and recently applied for a position at the “big box” hardware store chain but were passed over, you may be receiving a $50 gift card. If you live further than 25 miles away and are in the same situation, you might be receiving a check for 35 bucks.
According to an article on Law360.com by Matthew Guarnaccia, a judge in North Carolina recently approved a $2.2 million settlement to compensate 37,600 prospective Lowe’s employees who were passed over for positions because of information contained in background checks.
The case dates back to 2003, when three men sued Lowe’s as well as LexisNexis Screening Solutions (now First Advantage Background Services Corp.). The men alleged that Lowe’s based it’s hiring decisions either in whole or in part on information found in consumer reports generated to investigate a potential employees criminal history. This in itself was not the crime. The reason why Lowe’s failed to comply with FCRA regulations is because they did not provide these prospective employees a with a copy of these reports.
Most HR professionals know that this is a major “boo boo”, but often times it’s one of those things that falls through the cracks. In the end, the judge ruled that Lowe’s did not comply with regulations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, known to many of us involved in the HR and background screening worlds as “adverse action”.
To find out more about how Adverse Action works, take a look at this flowchart that we created here at VICTIG to assist our clients:
Hopefully this flow chart can help your company to maintain FCRA compliancy and avoid having to fork out $50 gift cards to any potential employees.
