by Tanya
(Seattle)
My boss went on vacation for 6 months to England. She left me in charge to run her business. This included but not limited to managing, hiring employees. Scheduling and dealing with clients. In charge of company phone. Banking. And much more. It is a cleaning company so I had to clean also. She paid me a salary that was the hourly pay we talked about and amounted to 30hrs. a week. She came back from England and said she did not have any money. She put me on hourly pay & lowered it by $2/hr. And I am still expectd to run her company because she does not want to deal with it. Though I only get paid for running the compnay at 10 hrs. a week. Which is unrealistic. And then I have to clean. She wouldn’t even help medo something when I asked her as she said that is what I have you for.
Can I quit & get unemployment benefits?
Tanya,
Here is a link to Washington State’s statute on voluntary leaving.
You’ll notice that the statute does not directly address your particular question, except to say:
(c) In determining under this subsection whether an individual has left work voluntarily without good cause, the commissioner shall only consider work-connected factors such as the degree of risk involved to the individual’s health, safety, and morals, the individual’s physical fitness for the work, the individual’s ability to perform the work, and such other work connected factors as the commissioner may deem pertinent, including state and national emergencies. Good cause shall not be established for voluntarily leaving work because of its distance from an individual’s residence where the distance was known to the individual at the time he or she accepted the employment and where, in the judgment of the department, the distance is customarily traveled by workers in the individual’s job classification and labor market, nor because of any other significant work factor which was generally known and present at the time he or she accepted employment, unless the related circumstances have so changed as to amount to a substantial involuntary deterioration of the work factor or unless the commissioner determines that other related circumstances would work an unreasonable hardship on the individual were he or she required to continue in the employment.
I do believe a reasonable person would want to know how the state decided this issue for others before they make the leap to quit…so we need decisions…uh, but where are they??
This page http://www.oah.wa.gov/Unemployment.shtml#tips
directs you to this page,
http://www.oah.wa.gov/LegalResearch.shtml#Libraries which has a link (WITH A WARNING and do read it because you’ll want to make sure the information the state is directing you to is RELEVANT) to this page…
http://government.westlaw.com/wapcd/ I entered the keywords (just to make sure it worked) “reduction in pay” “change in conditions of employment” “voluntary leaving”… check the statutes and use the words they use.
After you research the resources above and you still have questions, consider checking the Unemployment Law Project website and consider yourself lucky that Washington State does have an organization that offers free unemployment help.