Employers demanding history of social welfare payments

Our man in Havana

Is it legal for an employer to demand an employee to give him a history of what welfare you have claimed in the previous 5 years? This is usually getting the employee to sign a letter so the employer can ask himself.

The reason I ask is I have seen these a lot at the interview stage in recruitment. Why do they need this info?

seamus

It sounds dodgy, but I guess the reason is to see if you've been taking frequent long-term sick leave or extended career breaks.

It's not something I've ever been asked to sign or even heard of.

nubbintom

Ive never heard of it either, I was told that your past history, earnings and what ever else is no concern of a new employer.

eth0_

That sounds really dodgy, i've never heard of that before!
And I wouldn't have thought the social welfare would disclose this information to an employer anyway.

betterthanyou

Bond-007 wrote:

Is it legal for an employer to demand an employee to give him a history of what welfare you have claimed in the previous 5 years? This is usually getting the employee to sign a letter so the employer can ask himself.

The reason I ask is I have seen these a lot at the interview stage in recruitment. Why do they need this info?

I don't think the welfare office would ever give out your information.

so maybe its just a trick to see if you will crack and say I was off sick from
my last job for 6 months or something.

I have never heard of an potentical employer requesting this info.

WhiteWashMan

i have heard of this in certain areas of employment.
its usually in 1 of 3 areas.

exceedingly high paid jobs, the likes of which i will never see

security jobs, such as securicor or chubb etc, where yo umay need 10 years of reference due to the large amounts of money you need to guard

high security areas, such as military, police, military contracts, top security goverment stuff etc.

if its for mcdonalds, youve probably been marked as the 1 in 1000 employees who they will nurture into a mcmanager. haha!

TempestSabre

eth0_ wrote:

That sounds really dodgy, i've never heard of that before!
And I wouldn't have thought the social welfare would disclose this information to an employer anyway.

No your not allowed. I would be interested in hearing more about this, what they sign and how they make a request for that information. PM me if you prefer. I don't work in the Social Welfare but in something similar and could find out the specific rules. Though I'm sure if you rang up your local Social Welfare office they'd tell you the same thing.

If you did get sick with such a company I'd hate to think how they'd treat you.

Our man in Havana

It is normally a letter in the form of:

I (name) PPSN: (number) hereby authourise the Dept of Social welfare to disclose details of all benefits paid to me in the last 5 years to (name of dodgy company).

Signed:

(hapless employee)

TempestSabre

You'd think

Bond-007 wrote:

"dodgy company"

would ring alarm bells...