I think it helps in these kinds of situations to imagine that instead of a job we're talking about, there's a girl. You're really desperate because your mother is hounding you to get a girlfriend and all your friends are teasing you about how maybe you're gay, but you're ugly as sin and no girl wants to go out with you. You ask a girl to go out with you, but she says she won't consider it unless you shave your head. Do you have a right to force her to date you without having any requirements? That's what the State of Maryland is doing here- they're forcing one member of an association to give up the freedom to decide not to associate based on some arbitrary (and we all agree) stupid criteria.

However, back to jobs, even if you're poor, you still have the right to refuse. Just as even if there aren't a lot of girls in your town you may not want to shave your head to date your first choice. Desperation doesn't remove choice.

Further, the way things work out, there are a whole lot fewer Chairman of Goldman Sacks type jobs than there are janitor type jobs. Thus the fewer skills you have, the more jobs there are to choose from. This makes sense if you think about it- unskilled means no special training, so there are lots of industries that one might work in. While being skilled means training which immediately limits the number of industries where that training is relevant.

People want to accumulate skills and valuable ones, not because there are more jobs the more skill you have, but because there are fewer, and thus they are higher paying because there are even fewer people who can do them.

Further, remember that every employer is competing with each other. Employers do compete on quality of life for their employees.

I've seen others compare someone's assumed need for a job to a form of coercion-- as if because you imagine they might "really need" the job, then they're being "coerced" into submitting to something that we all disagree with.

But this is, strictly speaking, factually incorrect. Coercions is compelling someone to behave in an involuntary way. Even if-- and I think this is an absurd hypothetical-- there were absolutely no other possible jobs you could do, there's no coercion here if you're asked for your password and refuse and thus don't get the job.

Coercion would be the situation if, when you refused, not only did you not get the job, but they broke your kneecaps. It would have be an act that the employer threatened to do to you if you didn't comply. Your external situation cannot make it coercive.

I think this is the problem that a lot of people have-- they confuse need with right, and thus actually advocate coercion -- the coercion here is the State of Maryland which has threatened prosecution if a company violates this law.

A job is an expression of freedom of association, and people have that freedom on both ends. That is to say, the employer has the freedom to not hire people for arbitrary reasons (e.g.: programmer knows C++ but not Java, doesn't get the job.) These reasons might be stupid, but using stupid reasons is competitively disadvantageous.

By the same token, employees have the right to refuse to take a job for arbitrary reasons (I won't work anywhere that makes me write windows software, for instance.) That choice lowered my income for some years (then it had the opposite effect later.)