Agencies and blacklists update!

Association negotiations have been successful. The consortium of travel companies who organized a collections scheme have agreed to dismantle their effort. This means no new blacklist of travelers.

This is not a total win however. Existing blacklists such as the one operated nationally by the Dallas Fort Worth Hospital Association still continue. Congress has a pending bill to put an end to such current and future blacklists. You can help get it passed with a simple letter to your elected representative - a sample letter and instructions to send it can be found here.

This also does not put an end to the dubious practice of individual agencies using collection agencies against travelers. In the largest example that we have heard of to date in which On Assignment, a large Cincinnati based agency, has been reported to be trying to collect $200,000 from their travelers. While some of this alleged debt may be legitimate, such as rental property damage, On Assignment has declined to comment for this report so the reasons for this program cannot be officially verified. Sources inside the company say that their program was motivated by the downturn in the economy and initiated in late 2009. This personal story surfaced on a traveler forum suggesting that some of their collections activities are in bad faith.

You can help us put an end to these abusive practices by agencies. Send us a email to board@pantravelers.org if an agency has ever threatened you with, or has actually sent an alleged debt to a collections agency. We will talk to the agency privately and see if a modification of their practices is possible. At the very least, we would like to see some transparency to the process: that travelers are made fully aware of the risks of taking a travel assignment including risks of collections and the potential for damage to their credit ratings, and that their contract accurately represents the real costs that may be assessed against them.

If any agency then continues such programs either abusively or without sufficient transparency and fairness, we will place them on a public list. Then travelers will be able to weigh the risks and benefits of working with particular agencies out of the around 400 agencies that employ travelers.

The link below has the original in depth article and links to related articles and issues.

Situation

A group of travel companies has contracted with a collection agency to settle contract disputes with travelers. This highly unusual move can result in damaged credit ratings. Most traveler contracts have penalty clauses that can be invoked for terminated contracts, no matter who is at fault. Historically, about one in every ten assignments fails to complete which puts every traveler at risk if they work long enough.

This story gets much worse. This same group of agencies is planning on sharing collections information among its members for use in pre-employment screening. This information is not limited to simple financial information but can include almost anything. Not to put too fine a point on it, this arrangement is a blacklist and can jeopardize your career. This is a clear and present danger to all travelers.

Travelers should consider whether working with such agencies is in their best interests. The reasons why an agency may place you on a blacklist may be unrelated to your actual clinical skills and abilities. Even a good traveler could end up on a blacklist. For example, you may be an excellent employee and your agency wants to limit your ability to work for other agencies. For many reasons, information sharing directly between private employers is not generally allowed by state laws and this novel scheme involves a federal loophole.

Background

A blacklist of travelers is an idea that comes around every few years. The thought of a mechanism to weed out bad travelers sounds constructive and is appealing enough superficially that it can override good judgment on the part of the participating agency. While blacklists in most forms are illegal (read about the common exceptions affecting travelers here), legal remedies are practical only for the most egregious schemes.

However when blacklists are publicly revealed, they can end up disgracing the employers involved. This can result in a public relations nightmare that causes loss of business to the affected agencies. And indeed, that has occurred more than once in the travel healthcare industry in recent years.

The use of collection bureaus will come as a surprise to most travelers because after all, agencies are our employers, with money flowing towards us. Often it is travelers that are in the position of trying to squeeze money owed out of recalcitrant agencies.

It may also come as a surprise even to experienced travelers that the industry average for canceled contracts is one assignment in every ten assignments. That means that every assignment every single traveler takes on average has a one out of ten chance of ending prematurely.

Travel contracts are commonly written so that no matter what the reason a contract fails, financial penalties may be assessed against the traveler. This is because of fixed housing and travel costs and even lost profits that the agency cannot recover from billable hours when an assignment fails to complete. Responses by agencies vary dramatically when a contract is breached, from nothing to threats, and even to the filing of lawsuits in court. Most regular traveler contracts leave damages open ended rather than being specific so the consequences are likewise open ended.

The use of collection agencies and the subsequent reduction of traveler's credit rating is a new weapon in agencies arsenal. A collection can be initiated without any review of whether it has merit, unlike traditional collection activity related to an unpaid bill. Because of the basic unfairness of selling unsubstantiated debt to a collection agency (they now own the debt, not the agency), this has been unheard of in the industry until now. While that is reason enough to object, that is not even the Association's primary concern.

This group of agencies is taking it one very large step further. Any collection activity against a traveler will be shared with all member agencies with the idea of pre-employment screening. A blacklist. This blacklist identifies travelers who have had failed assignments and the reviewing agency can choose not to hire based on this unverified information.

Effectively this specific type of information sharing falls into the same category as a credit check, a controversial pre-employment practice when hiring permanent employees but largely absent from the temporary worker industry until now. It turns out that a credit reporting agency (also known as a CRA) can function as a federal legislated loophole protecting employers who want to share information. You might be aware that it is difficult to get former employers to supply references, either positive or negative, because of the very real dangers of being sued in state courts. This same information (whether true or not) when supplied to a third party CRA, accomplishes the same thing and is protected by a federal law, the FCRA or the Federal Credit Reporting Act.

There is a hospital association in Texas that has been sharing “termination information” and salary history with their members (including not only hospitals but also registries and travel agencies) since 1988 under the FCRA via a third party (although owned by them) credit reporting agency. Their CRA now has clients in 28 states. This is also an interesting story with implications for travelers and there is a separate Association article here with full details including more details about the legal issues.

There are some chinks in this legal loophole according to our legal counsel, but to date, no one has put up a serious legal challenge. However, the use of CRAs for pre-employment screening is so egregious and potentially harmful to employees and privacy rights that two states, Washington and Hawaii, have passed laws explicitly banning the use of credit reports in pre-employment screening. Several other states are considering legislation banning this practice as well, notably California who passed such a law this year only to have it vetoed by the Governor. It has been reintroduced.

The best bet of all is a bill introduced in Congress to amend the FCRA to not allow it to be used for pre-employment screening. This bill is currently in committee in the House.

Our opinion

Blacklists are very enticing to employers. Particularly so in economic environments such as this one where there are many more applicants than jobs. They tend to expand their scope over time when left unchallenged. That is the unique danger to this one as well. An agency may place you on a blacklist on a whim, such as they didn't like the way you wanted to be paid on time. Or they may even do it to prevent you from working for any other employer but them! Whatever the reason, you may not even know you appear on a blacklist. And your ability to find out the reason you appear on such a list and contest it before an impartial party is very limited.

PanTravelers is opposed not only to collection activities against travelers, and especially against forming blacklists by sharing information about travelers between agencies.

What can we do about this?

This initiative is still in the early stages of adoption by this group of agencies. We are discussing the issues with them in hopes of curtailing this practice. If our efforts fail, then other measures will be considered.

The political route is the best way to protect your interests, now and in the long term. This is true no matter where your career leads, whether you remain a committed traveler or become a permanent employee. Supporting a change in the FCRA with your elected representative will help short circuit current and future efforts of employers to develop blacklists.

Even sending an email with a couple of sentences to your representative in support of this bill will make a difference. Correspondence to elected officials is carefully weighed when they contemplate how to vote on legislation. All correspondence to your elected representative has a very powerful effect.

We are writing a brief on this matter and will send it to key members of Congress. We have also made available a sample letter that you can use as the basis for your own letter/email/call to your elected representative. Here is the letter and links to find your elected officials in Congress.

Further reading and links:

Association article about other types of legal blacklists affecting travelers.

Sample letter to Congress and links to your elected officials.

Allnurses has a lot of posts about GroupOne, particularly in their Texas forum. This thread is of the longest with lots of useful information and anecdotes by affected nurses. 250 posts from 2005 through this year. Search for GroupOne on Allnurses to find more threads.

Good consumer article about credit checks and employment screening.

Dallas Fort-Worth Hospital Council   GroupOne Services

House bill H.R. 3149   Washington State bill   Hawaii State bill   California State bill