by David
(Florida)
We are an employer. We are wondering if we cut an employees hours down by lets say one day, can they collect unemployment for that day? In other words, right now we work M-F 8-5 with one hour lunch so it is 40 hours for the week. If we tell someone they will now work M-Th 8-5, can they collect UC for Friday?
If not, how many days would we need to cut back before they become eligable for UC?
The particular person we are thinking about is on a salary if that makes any difference.
Thank you for your time.
David
Hi David,
I’m so glad an employer is asking a question.
If you cut them back one day, they would be eligible to collect partial benefits .. but they won’t because a weekly benefit is computed as if they are totally unemployed, which is approximately 50 percent of what a person earned fulltime.
Partial unemployment doesn’t pay anything if you exceed your weekly benefit amount in earnings after Florida first disregards earnings equaling 8 times the federal minimum wage, then they start reducing the benefit amount dollar for each dollar earned.
It’s a very restrictive formula which provides little recourse to the employee to replace the lost wages with anything at all.
BUT Florida is one of seventeen states that currently has a short-time compensation program.
Here is the information directed to claimants and this is for employers. It is a program that an employer voluntarily participates in, and these programs also vary from state to state with regard to requirements which include a minimum number of employees.
The advantage to the claimant is that the unemployment benefits are based on reduced hours vs earnings.
I think the advantage to the employer would be not only as an aid to keep morale and productivity from suffering, but the issue of employee of employee retention because because once reduction in wages reaches somewhere around 17 to 20 percent in Florida (I’ve read decision with these amounts cited) an employee has good cause to quit which means full unemployment claims.
Chris