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| You have to pick a door. Any door is fine. Except the wrong door. |
By Andrew Delaney
Have you ever ended up in trouble for doing something you were told to do? I’ve been married a few years now, so I know I have.
Mr. Lillie knows what that’s like. He got burned at work. This isn’t a joke. He worked for a propane company and he actually got burned. He continued to work but at a limited capacity. A few months later, he got fired for an alleged safety violation. Due to his work injury, during this same time period, he was taken out of work by his doctors. While there was some dispute about his worker’s compensation eligibility, he went to the Economic Services Division (ESD) to try to get some financial help. ESD told Mr. Lillie to apply for unemployment if he wanted to receive any benefits. So Mr. Lillie did as he was told. Those of you that have some experience with how unemployment works might be thinking, “Why’s he applying for unemployment if he can’t work? He’s not gonna get it.” That’s right.
The Unemployment Insurance Division calculated “monetary eligibility” based on Mr. Lillie’s wages earned during the immediately previous June-July year. And he qualified under that calculation. This triggered a “benefit year.” (If you’d like to learn more about how a benefit year and eligibility are calculated, here’s a handy-dandy link to a previous post on the issue). However, he wasn't able and available to work due to his work injury and so wasn't able to get unemployment.
He continued to file unemployment claims. He was never approved. His worker’s comp finally went through and he stopped filing unemployment claims. Flash forward a few years. Mr. Lillie reached medical end and his weekly worker's comp payment ended too. He was now available to work and should qualify for unemployment, right?
Wrong. If he hadn't filed those claims years ago, he would qualify—because there’s a way to use the last year worked to make the determination. But the way the statutes work, DOL can't “reuse” the wages from a prior benefit year used to determine monetary eligibility, and so as it shakes out, Mr. Lillie was “required by statute to earn four times his previous[] weekly benefit subsequent to his most recent benefit year in order to be monetarily eligible for benefits in a new benefit year.” That sentence reminded me of the confusion I often felt during my first year of law school. I think it means that if he received—well, to be accurate, qualified for—$1000 in weekly benefits, he’d have to have earned wages of at least $4000 in the most-recent benefit year. This could also be a case of the blind leading the blind here. I won’t be offended if you correct me.
Back to our regular programming. Because Mr. Lillie hadn't worked in years, the claims handler denied his claim. He appealed to the appeals referee, and then to the Employment Security Division. The conclusion was the same up the line—Mr. Lillie doesn't get any benefits.
So, Mr. Lillie appeals to the SCOV.
SCOV, to its credit, seems somewhat reluctant to affirm, but affirm it does. SCOV notes that the statutes work a bit strangely in this situation. But the results of the various determinations are in line with the statute. SCOV acknowledges that Mr. Lillie’s “considerable frustration at being crushed between two boxcars of government bureaucracy is understandable.” SCOV also notes that it would be nice if the agencies let applicants know about the potential consequences of filing an unemployment claim. SCOV suggests that the agencies involved might want to do something about that.
Supposedly, the DOL is working on making sure people who apply for unemployment know the consequences of a failed application for unemployment benefits. I doubt that’s much comfort to Mr. Lillie.
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