by Kay
(NC)
I live in NC and the convenient store I have worked for, for about 5 years is selling out.
Do I have to accept the job offer by the other company, or can I decline and get my unemployment? I have been through a sell out before and the other company kept all of the employees on long enough to keep us from collecting unemployment and to train their own people, then I was without a job and no benefits.
So Iâm asking cause the owner came in today and said he sold and his last day is a week away really need to know what to do.
Hi,
It is commonplace, when one owner of a business sells to another, that the new owner will offer the current employees the opportunity of continuing to be suitably employed.
One reason is it is commonplace for an employee to initially be deemed eligible for benefits due to a legitimate lack of work claim (layoff) when their former employer ends an at-will employment relationship with the sale of a company.
But, it is also commonplace those employees will subsequently be denied benefits they were found eligible to receive, if the unemployment department subsequently gets wind of a refusal of suitable work and determines their continuing eligibility should be halted because they refused an offer of work from the new owner.
Refusing suitable work is a conditional eligibility a lot of people being laid off, or having one position eliminated need to be concerned about, regardless if the initial cause for separation logically, is an eligible separation.
So, I’m happy you’re considering the issue before refusing any offer, because if it were me being offered the same, or similar job by the new employer, I WOULD NOT refuse the offer .. but I would also not let my guard down with the new employer, who may prefer attempting to get people to quit, to bring in their own employees, or look for reasons to fire “excess” employees due to the sale.
This is also as good a time as any you, or any others reading about what can be a not so obvious consequence, to absorb the criteria an unemployment department uses when determining if someone may have refused a suitable, or an unsuitable offer of work.
You will find the criteria about suitable work, and some Q&A’s addressing how that criteria interacts with an offer of what may otherwise be suitable work, to make an offer of employment unsuitable for an employee, or unemployed person to risk not accepting a job, when you click the “Suitable Work” link under Benefits Q&As. (click the menu button (if you’re viewing via a mobile phone).
Chris