BILL ANALYSIS

H.B. 3151

By: Torres

Economic & Small Business Development

Committee Report (Unamended)

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

WorkInTexas.com is Texas' own Monster.com or Hotjobs.com, allowing job seekers and employers to connect with one another.  It also serves as the state's portal for unemployment insurance claims, requiring all claimants to register at the site in order to search for work and comply with work search requirements.

Currently, the unemployment compensation information entered at WorkInTexas.com is treated as confidential and not subject to disclosure, but the job matching services information provided by job seekers and employers at the site is not treated the same way.  H.B. 3151 would protect the job seekers and employers who are registered with WorkInTexas.com by making the information they provide confidential and not releasable to a third party under open records law.

RULEMAKING AUTHORITY

It is the committee's opinion that rulemaking authority is expressly granted to the Texas Workforce Commission in SECTION 2 of this bill.

ANALYSIS

H.B. 3151 amends the Labor Code to make it a Class A misdemeanor offense to solicit, disclose, receive, or use, or authorize, permit, participate in, or acquiesce in another person's use of, job matching services information that reveals identifying information regarding any individual or past or present employer or employing unit or information that foreseeably could be combined with other publicly available information to reveal identifying information regarding any individual or past or present employer or employing unit.  The bill defines "job matching services information" to mean information in the records of the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) that pertains to the TWC's job matching services provided to employers and job seekers through the Internet, workforce centers, or other means.  The bill requires the TWC to adopt and enforce reasonable rules governing the confidentiality, custody, use, preservation, and disclosure of job matching services information and requires the rules to include safeguards to protect the confidentiality of identifying information regarding any individual or any past or present employer or employing unit contained in job matching services information, including any information that foreseeably could be combined with other publicly available information to reveal identifying information regarding the individual, employer, or employing unit, as applicable.  The bill specifies that job matching services information is not public information for purposes of the state open records law. 

EFFECTIVE DATE

September 1, 2011.