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May 6, 2020

Panel: It shouldn’t pay workers to ‘game’ unemployment system

Webinar panelists (clockwise from top left) Sheehan, Bartolomeo, Blumenthal and Villano.
By Michael C. Bingham

Workers who decline to return to their jobs because they receive $600 in weekly federal unemployment insurance benefits on top of state UI benefits, are improperly (if not illegally) gaming the system, and their employers are obligated to report them. 

The federal unemployment insurance “booster shot,” formally known as the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Act (PUAA), was part of the historic $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief package passed by Congress in the first weeks of the public-health emergency. The $600 was designed to supplement state UI benefits for laid off workers for a period up to four months.

“It has come up with more and more employers that they’re having trouble getting their employees to come back to work,” observed Garrett Sheehan, president of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce and moderator of a Tuesday morning webinar on workforce issues pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Panelists included U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Workforce Alliance President and CEO William Villano and state Deputy Labor Commissioner Dante Bartolomeo.

“If anyone on this [Zoom] call asks an employee to come back to work, and that employee says [he or she] would rather stay home and collect unemployment insurance, all that employer has to do is call the [state’s] Department of Labor, and that person is going to be off unemployment insurance, and potentially liable legally if he or she has lied to the Department of Labor,” said Blumenthal, “because there is a legal obligation to come back to work if your job is reopened. That’s always been the law.”

The DOL’s Bartolomeo added that “An employee may not receive unemployment benefits just because they want to, and they don’t want to go back to work. And the employer has the ability to protest that.”

Bartolomeo said employers can send an e-mail to the Department of Labor’s Merit Rating Unit (which adjudicates eligibility for UI benefits on a worker-by-worker basis) to report employees who are offered re-employment but decline because they’re making more money to stay home and binge-watch Netflix reruns.

Bartolomeo clarified that “There are times when an employee has a legitimate reason for not going back” to his/her job. “For example, if they’re immuno-compromised themselves, or they’re taking care of a child or an elder person who is immuno-compromised and they simply cannot go back into an environment that they feel will be unsafe, they have a right to due process” to make their case to the DOL for uninterrupted UI benefit payments.

Also, “Unemployment [insurance benefits] does allow for partial [layoffs]” — say, an hourly employee whose weekly hours are reduced from 40 to 20, Bartolomeo said. “It is for underemployment as well as unemployment.”

“I think the vast majority [of idled Connecticut workers] really want to come back to work,” Blumenthal added. “People are eager to work. I have a fundamental amount of trust in our Connecticut workforce.”

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1 Comments

Anonymous
May 11, 2020

First, it took an inordinate amount of time to get the benefits because the state's systems weren't up to the crush of newly unemployed filings for benefits. They finally get the additional $600 last week & we, the employer, are supposed to say come back to work & take a 50% paycut. You don't seem to understand the importance of morale when it comes to employee performance. Sure I can have their unemployment benefits cancelled but, I assure you, not many are going to be motivated to do a fabulous job. They sacrificed for us, time to be a little more understanding regarding their situation. You also must remember that if we have a flare up in a month or two and have to close again, that additional $600 won't be available.

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