Unemployment

A: Unemployment & Unemployment Insurance (UI)

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...

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