Fear of returning to work may not cost recipients their jobless benefits
The prospect of returning to work is a quandary a number of unemployed Pennsylvanians are facing, as counties transition from the red phase to the less restrictive yellow phase per order of Gov. Tom Wolf.
What if I’m called back to work, but won’t feel safe there? What if my employer is opening in defiance of the governor? If I don’t report, will I lose my unemployment benefits?
Jerry Oleksiak and Susan Dickinson of the state Department of Labor & Industry allayed some concerns Monday afternoon during a WebEx media conference. The briefing took place three days after 24 north-central and northwestern counties went yellow, and three days after Wolf announced that Southwestern Pennsylvania – except Beaver County – would do the same this Friday.
Wolf, in mid-March, shuttered businesses statewide that were not deemed “life sustaining.” Some will reopen this week, but must adhere to social distancing and other mitigation measures recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But with the pandemic still percolating, workers eligible to return may be reluctant to do so, especially if they are 60 and older and/or have an existing health condition that could put them at risk.
“If a business opens in defiance of the state order, you may stay home and not lose your benefits,” said Oleksiak, the L&I director. “If an employee refuses to return, we’ll look into whether that individual has a good cause to stay home.”
Dickinson, L&I’s director of Unemployment Compensation Benefits Policy, said her department receives quarterly reports from companies listing employees, and if it is determined that workers are getting paid and have been collecting UC benefits, they will have to reimburse the state.
Labor & Industry has been inundated since the coronavirus started gaining momentum in Pennsylvania more than two months ago. The department was fully staffed and funded then, a time when unemployment and compensation claims were low. Claims, telephone calls and emails have arrived by the millions since, leading to delays in benefit decisions and benefit payments, endless busy signals and mountains of public discord.
L&I since has added more than 800 employees for its unemployment centers – 500 reassigned from other agencies, 250 new hires and 70 brought out of retirement.
It also had to implement an entire system for the new Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, through which independent contractors, gig workers and other self-employed Pennsylvanians can apply for unemployment benefits, current and backdated. (Those workers, normally, are not eligible for regular Unemployment Compensation benefits.) PUA is an offshoot of the recently enacted federal CARES Act, and the PUA online site (www.uc.pa.gove/pua) was not fully operational until last Thursday.
Dickinson stressed the importance of filing weekly for PUA, which provides up to 39 weeks of benefits. She also said the system for Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation benefits should be fully operational next week. PEUC recipients can get up to 13 more weeks of benefits if they’ve already exhausted state or federal UC benefits.
Oleksiak, as he does weekly, listed financial figures that continue to mount. Prominent among them were: 1.8 million new jobless claims were filed, about 74% of which have been handled; and his department has made 13.9 million payments totaling $6.8 billion – $4.66 billion for regular Unemployment Compensation, $2.14 billion in PUA.