Recruitment agencies and the creation of a dossier society

by Bob Briton

The centres of our cities are now peppered with recruitment agencies, 
labour hire, employment or placement services, job shops, career 
consultancies and the like. What all these establishments have in common is 
that they have been set up to take a slice from the trade in workers. Their 
real "clients" are employers, who pay extra to the agencies for workers 
recruited through them. The bosses do this to be rid of the need to recruit 
workers themselves and, in some cases, to shift the responsibility for 
oncosts like superannuation onto the labour hire company.

Some have taken over recruitment functions from the Commonwealth Department 
of Social Security and form part of its Jobs Network.

The Commonwealth Government has its own service called Employment National. 
Others are branches of private networks, for example Drake Overload, 
Comskil and the Salvation Army's Employment Plus.

Others, still, are stand-alone independent service providers.

As a jobseeker you might choose to use their services or you might be 
obliged to by Centrelink.

Call them what you will and no matter their status within the system, these 
organisations are in a unique and fairly powerful position when it comes to 
collecting, storing and passing on information about the people contacting 
their offices for assistance.

For one thing the people (job seekers in this instance), volunteer personal 
information like name, address, work history and sorts of other details 
including claims for workers' compensation or any police record.

Anyone who has ever used an employment agency would be aware of this and 
would probably accept this type of intrusion into their privacy as being 
necessary in certain circumstances.

However, these details form only the tip of a potential information iceberg 
that can be collected about an individual worker. Users of these agencies 
should have started to receive reminders of this fact as recent amendments 
to the Privacy Act 1988 come into force.

In December last year, changes were made to the National Privacy Principles 
(NPP) associated with the Act that oblige institutions that collect data on 
individuals to make this situation known to the subjects of their 
information gathering.

The changes were mostly aimed at bringing these guidelines up to date with 
the realities of the internet and of an explosive growth in the number of 
direct marketing companies. Most of the changes are to be welcomed.

Unfortunately, when it comes to things like employment agencies it has 
seemingly taken a de facto situation where these organisations may collect 
personal and sensitive information on individuals and made the arrangements 
de jure.

Employment agencies are now supposed to draw your attention to a statement 
of the types of personal and sensitive information that they may collect 
about you. Most of these statements will use or paraphrase parts of the 
Act.

Manpower Services (Australia) Pty Ltd has issued a statement that says 
that, in addition to personal information like the opinions of others on 
your work performance (whether true or not), your work experience, the 
results of aptitude tests and so on, the following types of sensitive 
information might be collected about you:

* racial or ethnic origin;
* political opinion;
* membership of a political association or religious beliefs, affiliations 
or philosophical beliefs;
* membership of a professional or trade association or membership of a 
trade union;
* sexual preferences or practices;
* criminal record;
* health or disability (at any time);
* expressed wishes about the future provision of health services.

This information will, for the most part, not be supplied by you but third 
parties like employers, colleagues and others when, as the agency says:

* we receive any reference about you;
* we receive results of inquiries that we might make of your former 
employers, work colleagues, professional associations or registration body
* we receive the results of any competency or medical test
* we receive performance feedback (whether positive or negative);
* we receive any complaint from or about you in the workplace;
* we receive any information about a workplace accident in which you are 
involved
* we receive any information about any insurance investigation, litigation, 
registration or professional disciplinary matter, criminal matter, inquest 
or inquiry in which you are involved...

In the Manpower example this information may be disclosed to:

* potential and actual employers and clients of Manpower;
* referees;
* other member organisations of the Manpower group;
* our insurers;
* a professional association or registration body that has a proper 
interest in the disclosure of your personal and sensitive information;
* a Workers Compensation body;
* our contractors and suppliers — e.g. our IT contractors and database 
designers; 
* any person with a lawful entitlement to obtain the information.

Of course, for a fee you can have access to the information held about you 
unless it is a document covered by one of the many exceptions contained in 
the National Privacy Principles.

These principles (which relate to a self-regulated system with no formal 
complaints mechanism) are a smorgasbord of special pleadings on the part of 
industry.

If you can establish that any piece of sensitive information held about you 
is not accurate, complete and up-to-date you can ask that it be corrected.

If you can't reach agreement with the agency about the truth of a piece of 
information, you can ask that a document supplied by you and putting your 
position be placed with the disputed document(s) on their files.

For most job seekers all these arrangements raise as many questions or more 
than they set out to answer. For example, how would you know whether some 
adverse personal or sensitive information has ended up on your file with 
any one of the many agencies you might have approached?

How could your political beliefs, trade union membership, sexual 
preferences or religious beliefs, for instance, be of legitimate interest 
to a current or potential employer?

With these and other questions in mind, I approached six out of the dozens 
of recruitment agencies I have used at different times over the years.

The first thing I noticed was that compliance with the National Privacy 
Principals was haphazard.

One had mailed their information collection policy to me and one had a 
small statement in an acrylic holder on the reception desk.

Others didn't have a policy available for me and others still were "in the 
process" of putting theirs on display.

All of the agencies appeared defensive when asked about the existence of 
such a document and asked for my name before entering into any further 
exchange about it.

This violates Principal 5 of the NPP (concerning openness) that says that 
these policies should be made available to anyone who asks for it and 
Principal 8 (to do with anonymity), which says that, where "it is lawful 
and practicable, individuals must have the option of not identifying 
themselves when entering transactions with an organisation."

Admittedly I didn't insist on maintaining anonymity — a decision I made in 
the light of how tense the meetings were already.

Three of the organisations made spokespersons available and one volunteered 
to forward my emailed questions to their legal department.

Unfortunately, the efforts of these officers did little to settle the 
issues raised. The first point made was that the latest legislative changes 
actually don't change anything in practice.

The second point was that I didn't have to use their services (a polite 
version of "it's my way or the highway").

Then there was the reassurance that the information kept would only relate 
to factors that could affect my work performance. As this relates to 
religious or political beliefs, "it might be that someone is a born again 
Christian who is always leaving leaflets on colleagues' desks or in other 
ways badgering them to convert them to their religion.or maybe a member of 
the Labor Party doing something similar". This would undermine their 
ability to work in a team.

Agencies would only be interested in these matters if they impacted on your 
work performance.

Of course it is illegal under separate Anti-Discrimination legislation to 
exclude someone simply on the basis of religious and other beliefs, ethic 
background, etc.

How about union activity? "I have never asked anyone about their membership 
of a union." Hmmm when in doubt, answer a different question.

What happens to this information? Is it passed on to potential employers?

No need to worry on that score, if there is any issue that might make you 
unsuitable for a position "I simply wouldn't put your name forward. If you 
were otherwise a suitable candidate and I did put your name forward I would 
not refer to the specifics but only mention in general terms that you might 
have some factors to consider. I'm paid to provide good quality 
candidates."

How would you know if an agency had some adverse information against your 
name? "If you were to apply for positions listed with our agency for which 
you felt that you were a very good candidate and felt that you had been 
passed over a number of times, you might think that something else is 
holding you back. You could then ask us for access to the information held 
about you."

Of course, no one at the agency would draw any inference from your making 
such a request for access.

Other reassurances were offered that were only partially relevant, given 
that I was only enquiring about hypothetical situations. One management 
spokesperson put it this way: "Look, there a very few jobs out there and it 
is a candidate-rich environment at present.

Unless you contact us we only keep job seeker data for three months before 
the information is deleted anyway. We couldn't possibly store all that 
information on all those job seekers. You don't have an active file in our 
system, for example."

In conclusion, I am not offering this information as the last word on the 
role of employment agencies and the potential dangers posed by their 
information gathering activities.

Furthermore, I have no legal background and my only qualifications to make 
comment about them and their respect or otherwise of job seekers' privacy 
is as a consumer of their services.

However, I do believe that my inquiries highlight certain features of those 
organisations that workers should keep in mind when dealing with them.

Employment agencies are paid by the bosses to provide the most skilled, 
"flexible" and co-operative workers on the market at the lowest possible 
rate.

While they would probably strenuously deny it, the methods of employment 
agencies are thoroughly imbued with the bosses' ideology. Their attitude of 
what might be relevant to your search for work will be different to yours.

Use them if you if you think it might help your search and certainly if you 
are given no alternative by Centrelink-but beware. Unions have the brief to 
look after workers. Employment agencies cater to the needs of the bosses.