State lawmakers want to prohibit employers from requiring job applicants to provide access to their Facebook and Twitter accounts.
If a bill introduced by Senate judiciary chairman Dick Sears, D-Bennington, is enacted employers would be banned from asking job applicants and employees for their social media passwords, or for retaliating against those employees who don’t provide the information.
Asking for such access as a condition of employment is a growing practice among some employers, with employers screening how discreet candidates are online. Sen. Philip Baruth, D-Chittenden, said the practice has “exploded” over the last five years.
As Sears explained to the Senate’s economic development committee: “Looking at employers requiring people, when they apply for jobs, to provide them either with their password to Facebook, or to befriend them, so they could investigate … It seemed to me this was like saying when you come in for your interview, please bring your diary with you, and we’re going to read your diary.”
“It seemed to me that something was amiss here,” Sears told lawmakers last month.
But at least one state official has already raised a major concern about the bill: the state’s top police chief, Keith Flynn, who heads the Department of Public Safety.
Flynn told lawmakers last week that standard operating procedure for hiring state police involves a peek at their social media accounts, a policy applicants must “consent” to.
He explained that since law enforcement officials carry immense power and responsibility, the department wants to screen candidates via social media for implicit or explicit bias, membership of radical or subversive groups, like neo-Nazi factions, or personal problems like alcoholism.
“We’ve had instances where we’ve had potential trooper candidates, they’ve posted pictures of themselves at obvious underage drinking parties,” Flynn said. “We’ve had some where there are pictures of people driving down the road with a beer can, and in one instance, was sort of hanging out the window while he was doing it.
“Those are things that will certainly stir some further curiosity in the person conducting that interview,” he continued. “We need to have that information.”
But Senate Economic Committee chair Sen. Kevin Mullin, a Rutland Republican, wondered where to draw the line if lawmakers accepted that argument, since a public interest in responsible professionals is often an overriding concern.
“I listen to your arguments: They make sense,” Mullin said in the committee meeting. “But then I start to say…I could make the same argument when I’m hiring teachers. Same argument when we’re hiring recreational employees, that type of thing. Where does somebody’s privacy rights trump the interests of employers?”
Later, Mullin told VTDigger he wasn’t sure whether state police should be exempt from a ban on employers viewing internal social media.
While some might view state employees as requiring more scrutiny because their salaries are taxpayer-funded, Mullin also made the point that even in the private sector, people need tools to make sure professionals have clean backgrounds.
The head of a security company, said Mullin, who hires others to protect people’s homes and properties, arguably deserves the same tools to screen candidates as any public employer.
The state’s human resources chief, Kate Duffy, also argued that the state needs social media passwords for certain investigations related to unusual job terminations, or when an employee might be later criminally prosecuted.
Duffy added: “With the exception of law enforcement, I don’t think a distinction should be drawn between public and private employees with respect to asking for access/a password as part of the application process. A person does not lose all privacy interests simply because they work for the state.”
At this point, Mullin said, the fate of the bill and potential changes remain uncertain. “There are more questions raised than answers so far, in testimony on this bill,” he said.
Here’s the bill as introduced. http://www.leg.state.vt.us/docs/2014/bills/Intro/S-007.pdf
