Does T-Mobile hire people with felonies?

What T-Mobile has said

T-Mobile has not published a policy on hiring people with criminal records, and it is not on the Second Chance Business Coalition member list. Its careers legal page links to the Philadelphia and Los Angeles County fair-chance ordinances, and a few postings carry a Los Angeles or San Francisco fair-chance sentence. The 160 postings we read say T-Mobile maintains a drug-free workplace. Its workforce privacy notice lists drug and alcohol test results among the data it may collect from applicants and employees, and we found no published background-check policy.

• Local fair-chance notice

  Three of the 160 T-Mobile postings we read carry a sentence saying qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records will be considered under a local ordinance: two retail postings in the Los Angeles area cite the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, and one marketing-manager posting listed in Frisco, Texas cites the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance. The other 157 did not.¹

• Local fair-chance notice

  The careers legal page lists the Philadelphia Fair Criminal Records Screening Standards Ordinance and the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance among links about applicants' rights under the law. It does not describe a T-Mobile policy beyond those laws.²

Does T-Mobile do background checks?

T-Mobile hasn't said publicly whether it runs background checks. None of the T-Mobile postings, the careers legal page or the workforce privacy notice we read describes a criminal background check, when it happens or what it covers. The privacy notice's list of application data mentions employment history, education and drug and alcohol test results but not criminal records.^2,3

• How long a background check takes

Does T-Mobile drug test?

T-Mobile hasn't published a drug testing policy. All 160 T-Mobile postings we read say T-Mobile maintains a drug-free workplace. T-Mobile's workforce privacy notice, which covers applicants and employees, lists results of drug and alcohol testing among the data it may collect. Neither says that applicants are tested before hiring or for which jobs.^1,3

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.^5,6,7
• 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."^5,6
• You have the right to dispute inaccurate or incomplete information in your background report directly with the company that made it.^5,8
• 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.^9,10
• 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).^9,11

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.^5,8,12
• 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.¹³
• 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.^14,15

See whether you can clear your record in your state