News

Chipotle employees flee, citing impending INS audits

March 8, 2011

Audit notices submitted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Washington, D.C., and Virginia, in regard to Chipotle’s hiring practices, have led to the departure of some of the chain’s workers in those markets.

According to Reuters, news of the audits has caused many workers to quit ahead of the process. However, Chipotle co-CEO Monty Moran said the departures are “very limited.”

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning a review of worker eligibility documents at the chain’s approximately 60 units in the two markets.

A similar probing in Minnesota recently forced Chipotle to fire hundreds of undocumented workers, a move which led to protests and arrests.

Chipotle also has signed an agreement with Incentives Advisors (IA) to maximize its hiring credits.

IA is a national company that specializes in identifying, administering and securing hiring-related government incentives for HR departments. Its screening solution, Incentives+, screens job candidates for more than 100 federal, state and local hiring credits, eliminating an estimated 90 percent of the work associated with such a process.

Because IA is integrated into many of the largest Talent Management Solution (TMS) providers in the marketplace, Chipotle will be able to seamlessly deploy IA's tax credit screening questionnaire within their TMS' online job application process.

Candidates complete IA's 30-second questionnaire within Chipotle's online application, guaranteeing 100 percent of the job candidates applying on their corporate website will be presented with the screening questionnaire.

Screening questions are based on how a candidate answers the questions as well as the candidate's address and hiring location address. Recruiters can immediately view the tax credit eligibility results within the TMS before an interview or offer, along with a link to the pre-populated tax credit forms. Recruiters have eligible new hires sign the forms and submit them to IA, which manages the process from there.

By leveraging technology, IA also can easily capture significant refunds from credits which may have been missed by companies in prior years such as the lucrative HIRE Act credit and other similar programs.

"We like that candidates are screened for all applicable federal, state and local hiring credit programs upfront during our online application process. We'll also greatly reduce our paperwork we normally process with tax credit screening since HR will print forms for eligible hires only, not every hire,” said Dave McKlveen, Chipotle’s staffing manager.