| One basis of protest that disqualifies the claimant from eligibility for receiving unemployment benefits occurs when the claimant quit the job voluntarily by leaving without good cause. The unemployment system was designed to insure or compensate workers for wages they lost due to lack of work as a result of the general economic conditions or other reasons and not due to any fault of their own. All states, therefore, have provisions disqualifying a worker who left his employment voluntarily and without a good cause for doing so.
What constitutes good cause for leaving work has been interpreted by the various states in two different ways. One category of interpretation is that the cause must be a good one connected with the claimant's work, such as a cut in pay or an assignment to an undesirable shift. The other category is a more liberal and does not require that the cause for quitting be one associated or connected with claimant's work. It does not require that the reason necessarily be associated with the employment but may also include a good personal reason for quitting the employment.
In other words, as long as the reason was a good one for quitting, the reason may be one other than one arising out of the employment relationship. The states are divided almost evenly as to whether good cause is the more liberal one in a particular state or whether it is restricted to cause associated with the employment. The federal government has indicated that it believes the more liberal view is better.
The following items are usually not held to be valid good causes in any of the states regardless of whether they have the more restricted or the more liberal requirements in regard to good cause. It is not necessary to be concerned with whether or not these causes are associated with the work as they have been deemed not to be good causes. An employer's protests, therefore, will be successful in these cases:
- Moving out of the area or a change in residence
- Dissatisfied with pay
- Dissatisfied with hours
- Dissatisfied with working conditions
- To look for other work
- To attend school
- To voluntarily retire
- To get married
- Quit without notice or no reason given
- Because of dislike of fellow workers
Good personal causes are ones of a type which would cause or induce a reasonable person to quit employment yet they are not associated with the employment because they had no genesis in nor any immediate association with the claimant's work or with the employer. These may be such things as personal illnesses or injuries unrelated to the work, loss of child care, a family illness, and loss of transportation to or from work.
In order for a voluntary quit for a good cause connected with the work to qualify a claimant for benefits, the claimant must meet the burden of proof and it is on the claimant to prove both elements. The first element is that his reason for quitting was a good cause to quit and secondly that the reason was also connected with the work or was work related. The following reasons are those which usually are deemed to be cause connected with the work and, therefore, the employer would achieve nothing by protesting on any of these bases:
- If wages have been substantially reduced
- If working conditions have been changed substantially
- Number of working hours are reduced
- The working conditions have become unbearable
- Mandatory retirement under a pension program requiring retirement at a certain age as long as the retiree wishes to remain in the labor market and does not otherwise wish to retire
- Harassment by supervisors or other employees
- A resignation which is a constructive discharge
Copyright 2010 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. |