Adding insult to injury

[dcsmart]

Elizabeth Schulte explains why a majority of people who lose their jobs are barred from receiving unemployment benefits under the existing system.

IT WAS awful enough when Kenneth Brown lost his job in October. But then the hotel electrician took another hit--his former employer tried to block his unemployment benefits.

Brown had begun receiving benefits of $380 a week to try to support himself, his wife and three children. Then the owners of the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, just outside Washington, D.C., filed an appeal, claiming he had been fired for being deceptive with a supervisor.

"A big corporation like that...it was hard enough to be terminated," he said. "But for them to try to take away the unemployment benefits, I just thought that was heartless."

When a Washington Post reporter showed up at Brown's unemployment hearing in Maryland, the company dropped its appeal and refused to comment.

Kenneth Brown isn't alone in what he faced. According to an Urban Institute analysis of Labor Department statistics, more than a quarter of people who apply for unemployment benefits have their claims challenged by their employer.

While unemployment benefits are paid out by the government, companies pay unemployment insurance taxes in most states. Although the formula varies from state to state, a company's unemployment insurance rates are in large part based on the amount of benefits their workers collect when they lose their jobs.

More and more companies are deciding that they can save money by blocking former employees from receiving benefits. According to state and federal laws, workers who are fired for misbehavior or quit voluntarily are ineligible for unemployment benefits. The proportion of claims that were challenged on the basis of so-called misconduct has doubled since the 1980s to 16 percent, according to the Urban Institute.
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FULL ARTICLE
http://socialistworker.org/2009/02/23/adding-injury-to-injury