#12327 - Unemployment - Employment Law

To be eligible for UI, an unemployed person must show:

1. sufficient work history (having earned a certain amount, or worked a certain number of weeks, during a base period preceding unemployment);

2. compliance with work search requirements; and

3. involuntary quit not due to “misconduct” or voluntary quit with “good cause.”

Work Search Requirements:

• All states require UI claimants to search for work and accept suitable employment when found. “A claimant is not entitled to draw pay because she lost her job. Compensation is payable because she cannot get another one.”

• Unemployed workers with a definite recall date generally are eligible for UI benefits without actively searching for another job.

• Knox v. Unemployment Compensation Board: A claimant cannot attach such condition to his acceptance of work as to render himself unavailable for suitable work.

Disqualification:

• Workers who voluntarily quit without good cause, or who are terminated for willful misconduct, are disqualified from benefits. Disqualification proceedings raise many of the same issues prominent in wrongful discharge or discrimination lawsuits.

Voluntary Quit With “Good Cause:”

• Missouri disqualifies a claimant who has “left voluntarily without good cause attributable to his employer.”

• California requires claimant to demonstrate good cause, but does not require that the good cause be work-related

  • “Good cause may exist for reasons which are personal and not connected to the employment situation,” if the reasons are imperative and compelling in nature. MacGregor.

  • Permitting claimant to assert non-work-related “good cause” will inevitably involve reviewing courts in making family law

• Wimberly. Majority rule is not to disqualify for voluntary quits due to pregnancy. Federal law provides that “no person shall be denied compensation under … State law solely on the basis of pregnancy.” However, a state may adopt a pregnancy-neutral rule that results in the disqualification of all pregnant persons (e.g., a rule that disqualifies all people who quit voluntarily without good cause attributable to their work).

• MacGregor: A worker has “good cause” to quit where she leaves her employment to accompany her non-marital partner to another state in order to maintain the familial relationship they have established with their child.¹

“Misconduct:”

• Misconduct “is limited to conduct evincing such willful or wanton disregard of an employer’s interests as is found in deliberate violations or disregard of standards of behavior which the employer has the right to expect of his employee, or negligence of such degree or recurrence as to manifest equal culpability . . . . Mere inefficiency, unsatisfactory conduct, failure as the result of inability or incapacity, ordinary negligence, or good faith errors are not misconduct.”

  • Thus, even an employee discharged for good cause may be eligible for UI. McCourtney.

• McCourtney: A worker who is persistently absent due to a sick baby and is discharged for this reason cannot be disqualified for misconduct under Minnesota law.

  • “Misconduct may be demonstrated by excessive absenteeism alone. Where the circumstances do not overwhelmingly demonstrate that an employee’s absences are deliberate, we may also examine the employee’s history, conduct, and underlying attitude.”

  • DISSENT: “An employer becomes the victim of the employee’s personal problems with obtaining child care” because her UI premium will go up.

    • Counterargument: The employer is the “victim” of its choice not to provide childcare in this situation.

Scope:

• WARN Act requires employers with 100 or more full-time employees to give their workers and local government officials 60 days’ advance notice of “plant closings” or “mass layoffs.”

  • “Plant closing’ is a temporary or permanent shutdown at a single site that causes “employment loss”² for 50 or more employees during a 30 day period.

  • “Mass layoff” is a reduction other than a plant closing that causes an employment loss during a 30-day period for (a) 50 employees and one-third of workforce, or (b) 500 employees

Exceptions:

1. Faltering company exception: applies only to “plant closings.” Company can give less than 60 days’ notice if it has been actively seeking new financing to keep the plant open and in good faith believes that notice would jeopardize these negotiations.

2. Unforeseeable business circumstances exception: applies to “plant closings” and “mass layoffs.” “A business circumstance may be reasonably unforeseeable if it was caused by some sudden, dramatic, and unexpected...