Felon Protection.

• Author: Olson, Walter
• Position: Wisconsin in favor of criminals in the work place

Should employers be forced to hire ex-cons?

Imagine Sweeney Todd as your next barber. Or a paroled Unabomber wrapping gifts at your department store. Or Jim Jones of the People's Temple, reincarnated to manage the juice bar at your health club.

Things have not gotten quite that bad yet. But it's still worth taking a look at some recent headlines from Wisconsin that may confirm the emergence of the next "protected class" to be treated with kid gloves in the workplace: violent felons.

The Wisconsin Fair Employment Act makes it unlawful to hold a worker's or applicant's criminal record against him unless you're prepared to show in court that the record is "substantially" related to the employment. The standard example is that you don't have to offer a convicted embezzler a job as your bookkeeper. (That probably rules out Sweeney Todd as a barber, too, for now.) But so long as an ex-con applies for a job less directly related to his rap sheet, an employer in Green Bay or Kenosha is forbidden to give preference to a rival applicant who's never had trouble with the law. Nor will it necessarily get off the hook by citing the gruesomeness or notoriety of the applicant's offense - or the misgivings of co-workers or customers about dealing with him.

Which brings us to the case of Mark Moore, 37, who was convicted seven years ago after an incident in which he threw hot grease from a pan at his girlfriend; he missed, and the grease severely burned a 20-month-old child. After serving jail time for reckless injury and then being released on probation, Moore got a maintenance job - as a boiler room attendant, no less - with the Milwaukee public school system. Where more appropriate for someone who's just done time for injuring a kid? According to school administrators, Moore lied about his criminal record on his job application, and they fired him when they learned about his conviction.

Off he marched to the state's Department of Workforce Development (DWD), which ruled in Moore's favor, saying he had indeed suffered unlawful discrimination. The Labor and Industry Review Commission agreed; the school board has gone to court to challenge its decision, which includes an award of three years' back pay.

Scarcely had the headlines from Moore's case subsided when Gerald Turner's came along. Nicknamed the "Halloween Killer" for his 1973 rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl who disappeared while trick-or-treating in Fond du Lac, Turner had again become a figure of statewide notoriety...