Employers can only verify employment dates. Cite?

Factual Questions
1

I’ve been told for years (and in every thread about employer verifications/recommendations) the ‘rule’ is that when a potential employer calls a former employer, the former employer is only allowed to verify dates of employment but cannot comment on an employee’s performance. Or something like that. Corporate policies aside (i.e. I don’t care about employer’s voluntary practices), I’ve heard a range of reasons why you Just Don’t Do It. The most common of them seems to be that there’s no law about it, but if you say anything negative you can be sued into bankruptcy and your children will be forced to work in the coal mines (just kidding about the bankruptcy part).

So … cite?

I’d imagine there’s some serious case law out there that supports the “don’t tell them Rhythmdvl spent his time on the Dope” mentality. Or is this just a very widespread urban legend?

2

As far as I know, it is merely a common practice, not required by law. However, I suppose there may be an applicable clause in some employment contracts or collective bargaining agreements.

3

It’s not done as a way to prevent lawsuits; theoretically, if you say someone is a bad employee, they can sue you. Whether this actually happens, or if it’s just an urban legend (or just the legal department being overly cautious) is unknown.

4

Why do you need case law to justify a prudent HR policy? There’s nothing to be gained from commenting about the performance of a former employee. Any comments can potentially be construed as negative and lead to nasty lawsuits. Just give the dates of employment and maybe the job title is the usual policy. If an employee wants positive remarks from a former employer he/she can ask for a letter of recommendation.

5

I’m an H/R director and companies can say pretty much what they want, provided it’s true. Add to that you have the protection of “opinion” which allows a lot of leeway.

It is illegal to give false statements, but here’s the kicker, you have to be purposely blocking the person from gaining employment elsewhere. This is so that if an employer accidentally gives false information it’s not illegal.

I work for a large multinational corporation, and we only give out, Hire date, end date, and if the person is eligible for rehire. We will also verify final salary if asked. We do not give out any of that, all we do is verify it is correct or not.

We also require it be faxed or mailed to us. We do not give that reference via phone.

We also forbid anyone from giving a reference except the H/R department.

You can be sued into the ground if you’re a small employer. I have the advantage of a company with good lawyers. We get sued and since I’ve been here, never lost.

Many an employee will find a money hungry lawyer to try to get us to settle, and our legal department simply reminds the employee, that not only will we fight, but we’ll counter sue for court costs and time and should the employee lose, they’ll be on the hook for that. They back off ASAP.

And should we ever err, you can bet our lawyers will settle and it’ll never see a court.

I can say on the flip side, as an H/R director, it’s like pulling teeth to get references out of anyone these days. For a lot of our part time and lesser full time positions, I rely on a personal reference and the background history check and that’s it.

6

And once again we see corporations putting potential employees into a Catch-22 situation.

Possible employers not only want references, they want GLOWING references. Yet they refuse to give out any info themselves. Do you not see the stupidity of your corporation refusing to give more than hire date/end date/salary yet wanting references prior to hiring?

No doubt your employer is missing out on many good or even great employees due to such overall corporate stupidity these days.

7

Both the company I used to work for, and the company my wife now works for, have the policy - only confim the person did work for the company. It avoids having to say anything about the employment - if you give A a glowing reference, but only say B was a good employee without elaboration, others will take it as “aha, that means he was bad but they don’t want to say so.” It may also reflect personal conflicts or bias rather than actual employment performance; plus, if the person is a minority, prove they did not get their bad review due to their superior’s bias. Plus, some employers may be vindictive, some employers may be willing to praise everyone to help ex-employees, some may be honest; but how do you tell whether the employer is telling the truth?

It’s like marking in education - except there are only a few hundred universities and each one’s marking peformance is reliably consistent; whereas there are millions of employers, and the employee performance is dependent on the immediate boss’s whim. Good thing there are no horrible bosses, eh?

My dad worked at a university many years ago, even before this policy. Grad students commonly applied from other universities with letters of reference from their profs. I remember him joking about the “damning with faint praise” technique, where nobody would say anything bad about a student, but everyone tried to read between the lines. Apparently this was because eventually they were entitled to see the letters. If the student was not described in glowing terms, or some aspect of his work habits were not included in the praise, the implication was that the fellow was lacking in that regard but they did not want to come out and say so.

OTOH, the company I worked for hired some guy in accounting, who eventually transferred to the head office and over the course of 2 or 3 years managed to embezzle a almost million dollars. They fired him, but decided not to press charges. The investigation revealed that he had done the similar thing at his previous employer, who also failed to warn us. He went on to do the same thing for a municipal government at his next job; they did not have the option to ignore the crime, so he finally got charged.

8

Now that the law is pretty well nailed down, I’d like to note that my last employer told me in my exit interview that they would not give more information than name, job title, and dates of employment unless I signed a release. The release included “willful or negligent” behaviors including reporting false information. Is it really appropriate to ask for an agreement that says “we aren’t responsible even if we knowingly lie about you”?

9

I think it covers the situation “you claim we lied about you” as well as “oops, Fred should not have told them that, or should have given a balancing counterexample about you”. If the parting was particularly nasty, or the employee himself was the jerk, you can’t rule out even irrational retaliatory behaviour. It just gives the employer more legs to stand on. (Four legs good, two legs bad…)

Even being totally in the right can be expensive, lawyers being what they are. This probably is a clause to make any case against the employer harder to fight.

10

Yeah, there’s no law. I don’t even know of a case where anyone has won a lawsuit. I would imagine a company would have to disseminate false information in that case. But as the others mentioned, lawsuits are costly, even if you win. As I noted in another thread, if you can reach a prospects former supervisor, manager, etc., they may let you know more information, possibly oly with a wink and a nod (metaphorically, since that doesn’t work well over the telephone and email). I’ve made it practice to give out lots of info about good employees, even current ones who are looking around. I don’t want to hold anyone back in their career, and there’s no better recommendation than an employer giving a good review.

11

FTR, I just got a boilerplate letter from a very large local employer that let me go some time back.
They will not, in fact, verify eligibility for rehire or not.

12

Sure it is. The company has a responsibility to protect itself. They offer to validate provable facts for prospective employers, as a courtesy to you, and with the expectation that other companies will do likewise for them.

To do more opens up the company to legal liability, one negative word, (or words not positive enough) and people get irrationally angry because the company is now screwing them post-employment. So the company says, in a totally open an optional format, we will say more than just the dates, but you agree that you’re not going to sue us, no matter how pissed off you get when it doesn’t go your way.

13

Does that really hold up in court? Can you sign away your right to file some kind of libel or slander suit?

14

No, but by signing it, it makes it harder to win such a suit and harder to find a lawyer willing to sue.

15

Wow, that’s a strange response. This is the Straight Dope, isn’t it? We tend to ask for cites to back up conventional wisdom and school-yard mythology. I explicitly said I don’t care about internal HR policies and practices because they can be based on school-yard mythology and have nothing to do with my question.

Clearly you can get sued for any reason, and clearly the costs of litigation are high, and clearly many corporation’s lawyers have them do all sorts of silliness (e.g. warnings) in the name of unfounded prudence. There’re also lots of other reasons a corporation would set limits on the information it gives out (e.g. privacy, turnover, not wanting to place management in certain positions).

That, though, really has nothing to do with the question and certainly not in GQ.

I’m calling CITE? on the idea that limiting responses to fundamental facts is primarily to avoid being liable in case of a lawsuit–the reason primarily noted by Dopers. Company policy can be set on a whim. I get that. Company policy can be set based on astrology–but that has nothing to do with the legitimacy of the reasons behind such policy.

There are also several stories that can be told that put a company in jeopardy (e.g. lying to keep a person unemployed), but those stories are in the minority and are not related to the typical Doper answer. There are also ambulance-chasing firms that will sue anything, but (fortunately) most attorneys when taking a case will consider and advise on the case’s merits before proceeding.

So:

Little Sally gets her friend to pretend she’s an employer calling about a reference, and Mr. Sandwich Shop Owner says:

Little Sally goes to her attorney and asks if she has a case. There are no other issues at play (no ADA, no discrimination). The attorney makes a quick phone call and Mr. Owner says he’d immediately stipulate to the veracity of the evidence, but will immediately be filing for summary judgement. Does the attorney take the case?

If so (and why), then that’s the type of cite I’m looking for.

16

I was specifically told that this was the reason for our policy. But I’ve never seen it written down, nor do I expect to. Lots of policies are based on fear and a desire to CYA. So I can testify that this is the reason, not that this is a good reason.

17

Given that this policy is so prevalent, a potential employer getting bent out of shape about it should be a warning sign. Not the least that they trust an unknown party giving a recommendation over their own interviewing skills.
Someone I knew called me up about someone who used to work for me, and I had to say that I couldn’t give a reference. I tried to sound positive. He understood, and the guy did get the job.

18

What about great workers who left on bad terms with a terrible supervisor. Should their future ability to feed their family be dependent on the jack ass they quit to get away from.?

19

Actually, that’s sort of what she’s saying. If BeaMyra’s company wants a glowing reference from an applicant’s supervisor, an applicant like that is going to suffer. Broomstick is saying that an HR office shouldn’t be expecting a great reference like that from somebody else, especially when Bea’s company doesn’t offer those same references to any other company.

My dad once got thrown into the job of Personnel Director during a “let’s downsize everybody, even all the people who actually work” phase of a company he’s long since left behind. Let’s just say when your company decides that your Director of Engineering who has no HR experience at all is your best bet to run your HR Department, it doesn’t say a lot about your company’s commitment to HR. Anyway, he asked the outgoing Personnel Director what he did about checking references. “I never bothered, waste of time,” he said in so many words. Well, OK.

20

I would write reference letters for people under certain circumstances. Calls from potential employers only got the dates, title, and potential for rehire. And companies were pretty SOL if they asked the rehire question and not about our rehire policy, since the only absolute bars to rehire were quitting without notice and being fired for cause. Which means most of our former employees were eligible for rehire.