Believe me, I can imagine why you took that first job offer even if you had doubts about it from the moment you applied, or interviewed for it. I can also imagine why you might now be here, wishing you had thought twice .. maybe even three time before you decided accepting a job, subsequent to losing the job you were initially found eligible to collect .. would be better than collecting unemployment benefits.
Did you hear yourself calmly saying, “Yes, I’ll take the job”. despite the little voice inside your head yelling “What are you thinking about .. this job isn’t for you” ?
When you’re unemployed it is as good as any, to pause and learn that unemployment insurance isn’t the entitlement some enjoy calling it .., but a hard won benefit that’s all about shifting the fault and blame when employees quit .. or get fired and both requiring good cause relevant to unemployment laws of a specific state program.
Accepting a job is basically the same as admitting it was suitable work.
What prevents you from going back to collecting the benefits while you look for a job that really is suitable is that acceptance is also an admittance that’s going to stand ..unless you can show you clearly didn’t have the information necessary to refuse it at time of hire, or shortly thereafter, as being unsuitable work while you continue to collect unemployment benefits.
Proving Why You Accepted a Job That Was
Unsuitable is Related to Criteria For Suitable Work
Accepting a job, but then followed by the sudden need to requalify, when you reopen an existing claim for benefits you were initially approved for due to a discharge, or quit, can be one of biggest surprises dealt by unemployment law due to two little words found in nearly every section of law referencing the reasons for disqualification from benefits.
Suitable work is criteria that makes working for a living unique to us as individuals.
Even basic criteria for what’s suitable, can be interpreted differently, making it vary from state to state as what may also make a job unsuitable work.
In fact when it came down to the final decision, suitability was why I had no choice except taking the same job I’d been laid off from.
Even though I accepted the same job through a temp agency it was because I could not find a precedent in my state that would allow me to consider the absence of my former fringe benefits such as health insurance, or paid time off.
But, the thing about accepting a job we sense may be unsuitable to the following criteria is .. when we take a job offer .. it’s an admittance it’s suitable and therefore subject to the requirement to prove a quit was with good cause and that usually means also proven to be attributable to the work, or the employer.
Beginning on page 31 of the 2015 Non-Monetary UI Law Comparison Chart you will find some very state specific information about suitable work and even refusing an offer of it.
Basically suitable and unsuitable is related to our health, safety, prior experience and/or training, education, occupations, previous rate of pay, or prevailing wage data, and the distance we are required to travel to work.
The whole issue of suitability may also be related to a discharge for all the usual reasons, but why fire an employee when many have a perpetually high turnover rate of warm bodies in their particular workplace culture. Fact is, they might be the type of employer who fights unemployment with the knowledge that miserable, or out of their element employees often abandon unsuitable jobs , and fail to document their efforts to preserve their employment.. even if they could prove they were intentionally misled about what the job duties entailed at time of hire to make it sound more suitable and force the acceptance of work.
Unemployment benefits are related to not just what employers do, but what we do to protect ourselves, both as their employee and just a prospective one.