Does Michaels hire people with felonies?

What Michaels has said

We found no Michaels statement on hiring people with criminal records, and Michaels is not a Second Chance Business Coalition member. Seven of the 136 U.S. postings we read, all in Los Angeles County-area California locations, include a notice that applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered under Los Angeles County and California fair chance laws and that criminal history could lead to withdrawal of a conditional offer; the other 129, including postings in Florida, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas, say nothing about screening. Michaels' privacy policy says it may collect the results of background checks and screening for job candidates.

• Local fair-chance notice

  Seven California postings (store jobs in Burbank, Glendale, Downey, Newhall and Monrovia and a distribution center job in Lancaster) carry a notice for applicants in Los Angeles County. It says Michaels believes criminal history may bear on duties such as working with customers, including minors, and handling cash, cards and personal information, which could lead to withdrawal of a conditional offer, and that applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered under the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance and the California Fair Chance Act. We did not see this notice on postings elsewhere.¹

Does Michaels do background checks?

Michaels hasn't said publicly whether it runs background checks. Michaels' privacy policy says that for job candidates and employees it may collect results of background checks and screening; it doesn't say which jobs are checked, when, what the check covers or who runs it. The Los Angeles County notice on seven California postings refers to possible withdrawal of a conditional offer based on criminal history, which points to a check after a conditional offer in that area, but that notice is local and we did not see it on other postings.^1,2,3,4

• How long a background check takes

Does Michaels drug test?

Michaels hasn't published a drug testing policy. None of the 136 U.S. Michaels postings we read, including distribution center and manufacturing jobs, mention a drug test.

Rules for specific jobs

• Store, distribution center and manufacturing jobs outside Los Angeles County

  The postings we read in Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, North Carolina, New Jersey, Virginia and the other states in our sample (outside the Los Angeles County-area postings) had no background check, drug test or fair-chance wording.⁵

Your rights, and how far back a check can go

• Under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), an employer must get your written permission before it gets a background report about you from a background screening company.^10,11,12
• Before an employer decides not to hire, keep, or promote you because of something in a background report, it must give you a copy of the report and a document called "A Summary of Your Rights Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act."^10,11
• You have the right to dispute inaccurate or incomplete information in your background report directly with the company that made it.^10,13
• The FCRA's seven-year limit does not apply to criminal convictions, so under federal law a conviction can show up on a background report no matter how old it is.^14,15
• Under the FCRA, background and credit reports generally cannot include arrest records, civil lawsuits, or civil judgments that are more than seven years old (or older than the statute of limitations, if that is longer).^14,16

Your full background check rights

Before you apply

• You can ask a background screening company for the information it has on you, and the CFPB keeps a list of consumer reporting companies, including employment screening companies, with their contact details.^10,13,17
• According to the Clean Slate Initiative, 14 states and Washington, D.C. have passed Clean Slate laws that meet its criteria for automatically clearing eligible records: Pennsylvania, Utah, New Jersey, Connecticut, Michigan, Delaware, Virginia, California, Oklahoma, Colorado, Minnesota, New York, Illinois, and Missouri, plus D.C.¹⁸
• The Federal Bonding Program, run by the U.S. Department of Labor, lets states give employers free fidelity bonds that protect them against losses from a newly hired worker's dishonest acts, for job seekers with past justice involvement or in recovery from substance use.^19,20

See whether you can clear your record in your state