Employer groups are pushing back on a City Council plan to bar many Boston businesses from running credit checks on job applicants, saying a ?local law would cause confusion for larger employers.

“It’s one less tool that you have to hire more effect­ively, to make sure that you are getting the kind of workforce you need to succeed,” said Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts. “Why in the world would we want to put some sort of restrictions on the use of this information at the city or town level?”

District 4 Councilor And­rea Campbell and at-large Councilor Ayanna Pressley are proposing the law, which will go before the council in a public hearing today. Campbell said many job applicants in need of work suffer from bad credit due to medical bills, student loans and home payment fallout from the recession, and that poor credit does not correlate to poor job performance.

“These are folks who absolutely need to be employed to get on the right track,” Campbell told the Herald, adding that the law was similar to one proposed on a national level by U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and that in 2015 New York City passed a law barring credit checks. “At the end of the day, it’s about taking a risk, but also extending opportunities to those who need it the most.”

The law would make it discriminatory and unlawful for many employers in the city to run credit checks or ask permission to run credit checks on potential employees, or use credit information for hiring, promotion or discipline.

It makes exceptions for positions requiring “significant financial responsibility,” law enforcement agencies and financial institutions.

Hurst said the need for exceptions indicated the proposed law was bad policy.

“If it’s bad for finance, what makes it good for ?retail and other employment sectors? The people that come up with these ideas need to ask these questions,” Hurst said. “If it’s bad public policy for some, maybe it’s bad public policy for everyone.”

Hurst also said a policy for Boston could cause confusion for employers with businesses in other towns as well as the Hub. Christopher Geehern, spokesman for employer group Associated Industries of Massachusetts, said his ?organization did not think restricting credit card checks was inappropriate, but agreed it should not be done on a municipal scale.

“What we’re concerned about is a development of a patchwork of laws so it’s one thing in one community and one thing in another,” Geehern said. “This sort of legislation should really be done on a state level.”