Unemployment benefits question

[texaskj]

What would you guess would be the reason for a company to fire someone and then NOT deny them unemployment? Does this happen often?

 

[TC1987]

I could possibly see that happening to a registered nurse. Hospitals are like "Sorry, but we have to fire you for that..." R.Ns. seem to get fired for any accidental breach of company policy or minor medication error or just because some patient's kin trump up a story, like (falsely) claim that the R.N. made a racist remark to them. Apparently many new-grad R.Ns. get fired from their first job, or maybe first 2, as well. Nurses getting fired seems to be a common occurrence, based on threads on AllNurses.

But I could be wrong.

quote from AllNurses discussion:

Nurses will get unemployment if they are terminated for performance reasons. In most situations, employers won't contest unemployment, but they will if you are terminated for willful violation of their company policies.

If your paid via W2 and are NOT terminated for cause.
99% you can collect unemployment.

Paid via 1099 is trickier as well as Corp-to-Corp.

 

[texaskj]

Wow, TC, I had no idea nurses had to put up with that.

 

[marymm]

Perhaps the employee's HR file wasn't documented properly, or in-house written policies weren't followed to the letter, or the employee in question worked there longer than a year, or internal company policies disfavor challenging unemployment benefit claims...

 

[VRBeauty]

I did some seasonal work in a cannery when I was in college. The expectation there was that people would file for unemployment when the season ended. That didn't apply to those of us who were in school, of course.

ETA a close friend of mine works in the consulting field, which periodically goes through mergers and related downsizing, and of course suffered a lot of during the recession. When she laid off her unemployment claims weren't challenged.

 

[UrsTx]

I'm in the HR dept at my company. We rarely contest unemployment claims unless the person was terminated for a major violation. We understand sometimes things don't work out between the employer and the employee, or sometimes a layoff is the reason for the termination, and that the former employee will need some monetary assistance until they find another job.

Note many employers contest unemployment claims because their fees increase with each claim. My neighbor was in HR too and her firm contested every claim and almost always won.

 

[boerumbiddy]

In New York State, you can get unemployment benefits after a certain number of weeks of a strike and after layoffs, which could be considered firings. I am told I could have applied without opposition even after accepting a buyout, as it involved a reduction in force, but I was not looking for a job and was collecting a pension, so I did not do anything about it.

 

[amc80]

Here, you can get unemployment as long as you weren't fired for gross negligence. So unless you really screwed up you are okay.

 

[texaskj]

Thanks to all who answered. It's been really eye-opening.

 

[D&T]

We fired an employee of ours after several talks with his anger management issue and approachability issues (he was in management)
Everyone he had an issue with either quit or was then let go, Hubby and I owned the business and hubby decided to be more involved by working at the store.. Employee didn't like how much he was given (gave him raises to reflect the amount of work) and was angry... Hubby talked with employee and asked him what more can we do for him after he started breaking our stuff. He walked off to cool down for 20 minutes came back and wanted to quit.... then Put his backpack and stuff down, turn to DH and said "I'll wait til you FIRE me!"

We fired said employee as we didn't want him to not show up during his schedule shift or steal from us, and ruin our business, and break our things. I documented everything that has happened up to the point of firing said employee. He quickly applied for unemployment. I had to provide many items to show proof to his false claim.

You have to adhere to the state time frame for submission of paperwork, If I did not submit in a timely manner, then said employee would have been awarded. He contested, I had to submit additional information, and finally he appealed and Lost, had to have a hearing with a judge on the case, and lucky for us, employee was honest enough and said that he wanted to leave in the first place and we had to protect ourselves, our business and our customers.

Said employee also filed for workers compensation as well, he claimed he "slipped" we didn't see it, we let it go, however closing the claim is another nightmare... How many doctor visit do you need? he stopped the claim closure process after months of inactivity, then somehow the day after a car accident, he made sure he needed to go see a dr. under our workers comp policy .

Its a lot of headache and work for us small employers when people abuse the system. We are the one to pay into the Unemployment funds and I will contest every time if I can if it is the fault of the employee after every effort to rectify a problem. I don't want my rates to go up because I will need to pass the rates somewhere (usually the product you buy from me) since my margin is small.