I think there’s a reasonable middle ground, which is: employers can discriminate based on record only if that crime has a direct relationship to the nature of the employment and the position provides a clear opportunity for abuse in the same fashion as the original crime. Ie people who commit fraud can’t work in financial services, people who hurt children can’t work in education/childcare, people convicted of corruption can’t become cops, etc. But there should be a process, over time, to cleanse even these records (although perhaps in practice there would be carve-outs for particularly heinous offenses...). This doesn’t seem particularly limiting, from my perspective, but protects against the extremes you outlined.