Employee who quit gets unemployment
February 5, 2009 by Sam NarisiPosted in: Benefits Law, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, Terminations
A recent court decision contains a piece of advice for companies trying to contain the costs of unemployment benefits:
Don’t try to show resigning employees the door too early.
In one recent case, an employee gave her boss two-weeks notice that she was quitting.
The company starting looking for her replacement.It quickly found a new hire who could start immediately. Not wanting to pay the two employees simultaneously, the company told the woman she was terminated — three days before her resignation was set to take effect.
Claiming she’d been fired without cause, she filed for unemployment compensation — and won.
The company argued that she quit and just wasn’t needed for the entire two weeks. But the court disagreed. Drawing on similar cases, it ruled that being fired right before a resignation is about to take effect is still an involuntary termination for the sake of awarding unemployment benefits.
Cite: Porter v. Florida Unemployment Appeals Commission
Tags: involuntary termination, resignation, unemployment benefits
February 11th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Had a similar instance a few years ago. An employee accepted employment in another city and gave 30 days notice. A replacement was found and hired. During the transition, the leaving employee developed a “shortimers attitude” and stated that they would not train their replacement. The company had a policy that stated that we could opt to pay a person and not have them come to work for their last two weeks of employment, so we took that option. This employee decided to not take the job in the other city at the last moment and on the last day of ther employment, said that they were “rescinding” their resignation. We did not accept this “rescinding.” They got two weeks of pay for no work, paid for all leave they had on the books, and they got unemployment.
Before you get too outraged, though, in Ohio, if an employee quits or is fired for “just cause”, they are not entitled to unemployment. However, if they quit and take a job at the McDonald’s down the street and are fired for never showing up, then they will get unemployment. The second employer will normally not fight the unemployment claim because they have not paid anything into it, and the first employer will be on the hook for the full amount.
Here in Ohio, the state would rather put someone on unemployment which is subsidized by employers and some Federal dollars, than put them on the welfare rolls which is fully tax supported and doesn’t look good at election time.
February 11th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
I had a unemployment appeal hearing a few weeks ago (I’m in Nevada) for an employee that quit. During a counseling session she said, Consider this my two-week notice. Her manager said, I accept your resignation, and there was a witness present. We decided to let her go that very day and provided her with 2 weeks of pay in lieu of letting her work through the notice period. This was all explained to the hearing official yet they still awarded her unemployment benefits. Their position was that she wasn’t really quitting or she would have left that day. Unbelievable!!!
February 11th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
I would let the employee go home but give them their pay in good faith. You still have the two salaries to pay, but you avoid legal concerns. This eliminates the short-timer attitude.