COLUMBIA — South Carolina’s tight labor market is a major reason why the state should limit when employers can ask prospects about past criminal convictions, according to a lawmaker backing the change.
“Ban the box” laws prevent employers from asking about criminal convictions on an initial job application.
The early screenings now keep out some candidates that companies eventually would decide to hire if the process worked differently, said Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Columbia.
Under his proposal, employers still could ask about such past legal issues as a prospective employee entered the interview stage of the hiring process.
He has filed a bill to change how companies can hire in South Carolina for the 2023-24 legislative session. The change would help companies find more workers, which S.C. employers often say is a challenge, Rutherford said.
“It’s the overwhelming problem now in talking to businesses,” Rutherford said. “Businesses in South Carolina cannot succeed until we fill this labor deficit.”
Rutherford also believes his measure will allow people to find a constructive role in society after they have served their time.
Screening initial job applicants for criminal convictions in their past essentially makes it easier for an ex-felon to buy a gun than get a job, Rutherford said, because South Carolina’s gun laws are more forgiving.
The Greenville Chamber of Commerce, which advocates for employers in the Upstate, said it has not analyzed Rutherford’s pre-filed bill.
In the past, the chamber has opposed broad “ban the box” measures, calling them an intrusion into companies’ right to select their workforce as they see fit, CEO Carlos Phillips said.
The Greenville chamber remains interested, Phillips said, in proposals that expand on expunging previous minor offenses from criminal records as a way to make work available to those who have been convicted in the past.
Businesses should look at unconventional ways to give potential workers a second chance, Phillips told The Post and Courier.
“It is vital that returning citizens have every chance to find gainful employment because studies clearly show that folks who find work after serving their sentences results in lower recidivism and stronger communities,” Phillips said.
Past moves to enact “ban the box” legislation statewide have not passed, including a similar bill sponsored by Rutherford in the most recent legislative session, which did not get to the House floor.
Some local governments have taken the step.
In 2019, Columbia was the first S.C. city to change its hiring rules to not ask about convictions during initial screenings for its own positions, a move that Richland County has matched.
The city of Aiken also has passed a “ban the box” measure.
North Carolina and Georgia both are more lenient in removing past convictions from police records than South Carolina is, Rutherford said, making it more important to him that the Legislature help more people become part of the workforce.
Read More: Tight SC labor market called a good reason to change how employers ask about convictions