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Sunday, Oct. 21, 2012 | 2 a.m.
The work card, adopted in a previous era, remains a powerful tool of the Las Vegas City Council to deny people the right to be employed in certain jobs.
Such power was on full display at Wednesday’s City Council meeting.
But after watching two women weep and grovel, then have their personal lives splayed out — in sometimes embarrassing detail — before the council while begging for a work card, Councilman Bob Beers called it “torture.”
And change may be on the way.
First, what is a work card?
It’s a throwback to the days of the mob. To gain a bit of control over who the casinos hired, local officials decades ago began requiring people who work in the industry to go through criminal background checks.
Over time, local officials and Metro Police expanded the scope of the work card, which creates a revenue stream for the police department.
Getting a work card can cost up to $135.25, including fees for an FBI background check and fingerprinting. Due to the cost of appeals, Clark County has cut back on the types of jobs requiring the cards. In 2009, Metro issued about 10,000 work cards. Fortune-tellers need the work card. Carnies. Ice cream truck operators.
Even convenience store clerks.
Is that what happened last week with a worker at a 7-Eleven?
Yes. But before the 7-Eleven decision, the council took up an appeal by another young woman needing a card to work in a restaurant. After her father spoke on her behalf — the woman’s manager didn’t show — Councilman Steve Ross asked for a delay until Nov. 7 so he could talk to the owner of the restaurant. The decision left the woman in tears.
Then came Beverly Kay Whitby. The former card dealer and honorably discharged veteran read from a 1 1/2-page typed biography in which she outlined the following: an abusive husband who fractured her skull in 2000 and was imprisoned for attempted murder, a teenage daughter who died shortly after having a stroke, a nervous breakdown, becoming homeless and living under an overpass and being forced into prostitution.
She has been arrested but had no previous felonies and no gross misdemeanors.
After leaving Nevada, she returned in July to be near another daughter.
“I was fortunate enough to find a job at 7-Eleven,” she said.
The store is in unincorporated Clark County, which no longer requires convenience store clerks to have work cards. Her boss, however, wanted her to work in another 7-Eleven in Las Vegas which would requre a city work card.
“When Metro denied my work card, I was shocked,” Whitby said. “I have spoken with a couple of different convicted felons, recently released from prison, who shop in my store, and they have been issued work cards.”
She said the city’s Department of Planning staff demanded that every page of her application be initialed by her boss, and she was left feeling belittled.
“It doesn’t make any sense that my misdemeanor convictions don’t prevent me from being mayor, serving on this council (or) being employed by the city of Las Vegas ... but do prevent me from being a clerk at the 7-Eleven across the street from the 7-Eleven where I am currently a clerk.”
What did the council do?
The decision to grant or deny the card is subjective. At first, Councilman Bob Coffin said he wanted her to return another day with evidence in her support. But Mayor Pro Tem Stavros Anthony urged the council to give the woman her card.
Coffin deferred to Anthony, a former Metro officer, and the council voted to give her the work card.
How might this process change?
Beers said he wanted city staff to reconsider the process for hearing work card appeals. Clark County, for instance, dropped the public-hearing aspect of those appeals at least three years ago.
Beers said the Whitby denial case was “ridiculous.”
“She can work at four other 7-Elevens in the valley but she can’t work at the one in the city,” he said. “Doesn’t make sense for me.”
As for the public appeal, Beers said the Council “seems to be delving deeper and deeper into the private lives of people struggling to get work, much more than in other jurisdictions. And I don’t understand why.”
Who cares what people have been arrested for - let them work!
Bob's not the easiest guy to get along with (I've met him), but I'm with him on this one.
It's bad enough that this a working person's tax, but to turn their private lives into some sick, reality TV-type of circus, is ridiculous.
ACLU, you listening?
I forgot to mention: Vote against Coffin and Ross.
With all the BS that goes down in this valley, these two are concerned with humiliating documentation for a couple of convenience store clerks?
This is what we pay them for?
it's time to streamline and do away with these ridiculous proctological exams.
too much time, effort and energy is being wasted on this.
What a frickin' joke...
and I actually agree with Mr. Beers for the first time ever, on anything.
He is absolutely correct on this one.
This is nothing but a revenue-generating power trip.
The true reason for high unemployment and the failure of a housing market in Las Vegas is our local and state politicians.
"The work card, adopted in a previous era, remains a powerful tool of the Las Vegas City Council to deny people the right to be employed in certain jobs."
Schoenmann -- good article, but it seems neither you nor the posters are asking the right question, like why was such "a powerful tool" instituted in the first place? Surely the City Charter requires Constitutional compatibility. Beers seems to be the only one with a grip on this concept and takes his oath seriously. The others are actually flirting with perjury of oath.
"it's time to streamline and do away with these ridiculous proctological exams."
jt2tou -- well said. Those sucking on the public teat are too detached from reality to grasp the concept of how precious a hundred bill is to most of us, and how devastating a missed paycheck can be. Several years ago some Portland, Oregon, city council members tried living at a minimum wage level for a week. Seems their biggest sacrifice was giving up their Stumptown specialty coffee fixes. We the PO'd People of Vegas should demand the likes of Coffin and Ross do the same here.
"The true reason for high unemployment and the failure of a housing market in Las Vegas is our local and state politicians."
antigov -- amen to that
Everybody has the right to work -- it's one of our most basic freedoms, the right to make and enforce contracts without government impairment. Our Constitutions charged our federal and state governments with securing our freedoms, not eroding them to the point of taking them away from us, then hand-feeding them back to us only after we meet their conditions and paying their ransoms (licensing). But the flip side is if We the People act like livestock that's exactly how we deserve to be treated.
"...the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table." District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. (slip opinion at 64) (2008)
Do away with it. Period.
First, there is no need for the work card. If a business wants a background check, it should pay for it. Employers are smart people. They don't need government to tell them who they can hire and government shouldn't be in the business of telling them either.
This is, was and always has been a way to make employees pay for their own background checks. Essentially we are allowing some clerk at Metro to decide if someone is allowed to work. Is there any place else where the police get to decide what job you can have?
Get rid of all work cards..let the police do the street work, you know, investigate neighborhood break-ins and the like. Citizens should not be treated like criminals when they have nothing existing or outstanding on their records when it comes to work.
This is another way gov't. hassles productive people who only want to earn a buck, while at the same time coddling unproductive losers with ever more handouts.
I could understand work cards for casino workers, maybe for people who would be in a position to abuse children or the elderly, but a C-store clerk? Even under mob influences it still would not make any sense...
Lesson learned. Previous arrests, convictions will follow you for life like bad body odor. Don't get arrested. Don't have a criminal record. A lot of people fail to realize the full repercussions of a criminal record until it's too late.
Even if had to concur that these cards are neccesary, which I don't, what makes zero sense is why they 'expire' thus starting the money strong-arming all over again. Why am I re-fingerprinted--they didn't change, trust me. Why fill out all new paperwork. I am still me. Give me a permanent card, for one time period, at least makes some sense, although the entire process should be abolished.