Employment and the Boletín Comercial

A lot of people visit this blog because of some news I’ve posted about the rules that govern the Boletín Comercial, Chile’s registry of unpaid debts. I’ve mentioned before that I worked at that institution, and I know what a drama it is for many people to land on this list of delinquent debtors.

If you take on an obligation you should honor it, but unfortunately this instrument, conceived in the mid 20th century to protect merchants, has become a source of many abuses.

The worst of them is using it to discriminate against job applicants. If a person has debts, you can’t assume a priori that they are a crook, or dishonest. There can be many reasons why someone falls behind on payments.

To prevent these abuses, law 19.812 adds a paragraph to the labor code:

“No employer may make the hiring of workers conditional on the absence of obligations of an economic, financial, banking or commercial nature which, in accordance with the law, may be reported by those responsible for registries or personal data banks; nor may they require any declaration or certificate to that end. The only exceptions are workers who have the power to represent the employer, such as managers, assistant managers, agents or legal representatives, provided that, in all these cases, they are vested with at least general powers of administration; and workers who are in charge of the collection, administration or custody of funds or securities of any kind.”.

In other words, if your job has nothing to do with handling funds and securities, and you are not going to hold a management position, they must not ask you for any certificate from DICOM (the credit bureau) or the Boletín Comercial in order to hire you.