Sorry, but I agree with some of the previous posters, which is that you don’t want to risk your job over the fact some customers require you to surrender your license. I would expect something like that from a casino.
It does become annoying, however, when you have random businesses doing it. My wife recently had a situation where she went for a massage in Napa, CA and they required her driver’s license as a deposit for the robe. Oh, except they didn’t think to give it back to her when she turned the robe in.
Cut to her arriving at the airport in Oakland more than an hour away and realizing she didn’t have her driver’s license, then me having to e-mail a copy of her passport to a rental car counter person who was nice enough to give her a print out (the airline was zero help on this). After going through every extra security check they could think of, she was allowed on the plane.
Why not get an International Driver’s Licence? I got one several years back when I was going on a driving holiday in France/Belgium. Never had to show it (or my own home-province licence), but I figured it didn’t hurt to have it.
The qualifications are: you must be 18, have a current DL, $15, and a face.
There are totally unofficial ones out there, so make sure you are applying for the real IDP, probably best done through AAA.
Let the rentacops argue with the 1968 Vienna Road Traffic Convention, if they dare!
I see people telling you you could loose your job for not surrendering your license. This is false . If a customer requires an ID then they must accept your company issued ID. They can request to see your license to check it against your company ID. The law states a license belongs to the state that issues it and you lease it for the privlege of driving . It is actually illegal for you to surrender your license to anyone other than a law enforcement officer. If your company fires you , you can file thru the labor board for wrongful termination.
I know the thread is very old, but I do want to point out that whether you can file for wrongful termination depends very much on your particular state law on this issue, if there is one. If you are in an ‘at will’ state, you’re SOL.
And even if you’re not, you can file, but you’ve no guarantee of success or speedy resolution.
heck here where I live you have to leave a dl or id to get a pool cue to play on the coin op pool table …
Also some bars will let you run a tab for the night if you give them your dl so ya cant run out on the bill
one set of people tried to and the bar owner sent the sheriff to collect and give the license back … of course they used the excuse "we were so plastered we just used a cab … sorry "
And, on top of what your state law says about unemployment, your employee manual/handbook can supersede it in some places.
To make it even more complicated I (employer in this case) have lost cases on technicalities to ex-employees that were gaming the system and simply knew how to work it better than I did. In one case an employee signed something when he started working for me saying what days he could and could not work. After a while he rearranged them, his new schedule didn’t work for us, we let him go. He filed for unemployment says that we fired him for [something that had never happened]. I replied stating that it was an availability to work issue. Judge said ‘welp, he’s working 45 hours a week at his other job, clearly he’s available to work, you lose, he gets your money’. What I didn’t know is that ‘available to work’ is an unemployment term and I used it wrong, if I had just said ‘he can no longer work the hours he promised us he’d be able to work’ (using all the correct jargon), I would have won.
And based on other people that have had run ins with him, this wasn’t the first or last time he’s done this.
I find this hard to believe. I work at numerous government and military sites that require the DL as collateral for badging. It is a totally normal practice.
As a Canadian, I’ve visited the USA regularly, several times a year, and never had to surrender my DL or passport. (Leaving a passport used to be a thing in some European hotels).
US hotels typically just looked at my ID (I.e. am I really who I claim to be?) I don’t recall any taking a photocopy. Car rentals, special case, they must be able to prove to their insurer they were shown a valid driver’s license, obviously. Even getting tickets to go up the Statue of Liberty I had to show my passport. (but just, “show”); that was a panic, my wife was not carrying her ID and she had to run back to the hotel (fortunately, only two subway stops away).
However, Canada has much stricter rules about employment; it would cost the employer at least two weeks’ pay probably more to “let you go” without serious cause. (Honestly, I don’t understand the alleged “Land of the Free”. Your employer here cannot make you take a drug test, for example… It’s an invasion of privacy.)
I do have to wonder what would happen if you simply said “I don’t have my license on me”. They must run into people without licenses all the time. It’s not a crime to lie to the front desk guy. If you have to leave, drive away, and they call the cops, they’re the one making a false report.
We were at a music festival recently. In order to purchase alcohol you needed a wrist band, and that required a scan of your drivers license to verify age. I’m 58. I do not look young for my age. Turns out I didn’t have my license on me, so they refused to issue me a wrist band.
Of course there was a work around. My gf bought two beers each time and gave me one.
Can they ask you to? In general, that’s all that’s happening here. In cases where it’s required you would’ve signed a contract as part of accepting the job that would have stated how and when drug tests would happen. If you didn’t sign a contract, have a manual that lays this out or have some kind of across the board ruling, then it gets a bit muddier, but in general, no employer can require them, but if you get fired for refusing to take one (or having a positive one), it’s going to be on you to prove that the company was at fault.
It can be done, but UI law is complex and (IMO) somewhat unpredictable.
I doubt they’d call the cops over that and I’d be surprised if the cops would go look for some random person who told another random person they didn’t have a DL (on them) and then drove away. But if I was the one making the call and got a ticket for filing a false police report, I’m sure I could get it overturned because it was only made based on something told to me by the ‘suspect’ himself. The justice system kinda falls apart if every witness that makes an incorrect statement, based on something they believe to be true, might get fined for it.
Cite, please, for any of this stuff in the US. All but one state has at-will employment, and in general you can’t get any kind of ‘wrongful termination’ settlement for anything but discrimination against a protected class. People have this weird idea that there are all kinds of labor laws that don’t exist and have never existed in the US.
It’s generally perfectly fine for a company to fire someone who’s job is to go to customer sites to work but who refuses to or can’t pass the customer’s security check (unless you can show that the security check involves something like ‘no black people allowed’).
For me the point woild be that this is his employer’s site. In other words he is an employee and not a visitor. They should either give him the pass as a courtesy (after all they know where to find him if he doesn’t turn it in) or the company should give him a pass allowing hin access to those sites.
I think the name of the little plastic card is self explanatory. People have simply taken advantage of it’s convenience instead of implementing their own system.
If the customer, in this case, requires an ID, they should have had one made for all of their contractor’s employees when they were employed.
Same goes for everyone else that wants something to identify you when you are in their business, borrowing something, renting something, etc…
If you WANT to surrender it, that is totally your business.
If not…D r i v e r ’ s l i c e n s e . Unless you re driving through their facility and they are an officer of the law…no touchy