Archive for the ‘Employee Tip – Unemployment’ Category

Three Rules for an Unemployment Interview or Hearing

June 30, 2010

If you are a Wisconsin worker with an unemployment phone interview or hearing coming up (i.e. you will be answering questions from a legal authority in the unemployment process), please consider the three rules of thumb below.

Rule 1: Listen to the question, carefully.

Rule 2: Answer the question (without volunteering more).

Rule 3: Tell the truth.


These rules sound simple, right? They are easy to understand.  But they are very hard to engrain into your mind, and to adopt within your approach during unemployment question-and-answering.

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Polite Hearings, and the Distinction Between the Person and His Conduct

March 19, 2010

Dogs and Cats Living Together!

Recently I was at a legal hearing.  It was the same old drill in most respects.  Two parties opposed each other.  A boss had fired an employee.  The boss’s testimony opposed the employee’s testimony, and vice versa.  Neither side changed any beliefs when the hearing was over.

But after the hearing, a great thing happened.

After the hearing, I saw my client, the employee, approach the boss that had fired him and now testified against him.  The two men proceeded to shake hands.  Then they stood and talked for awhile.  From the two persons’ body language, I could tell that they liked and respected each other.  I also knew that neither person had changed his mind about the hearing, or about feeling right about his position on the job termination.

These two dynamics– having a big dispute with an opponent, yet liking that opponent– are not contradictory.  Not if disputes are recognized for what they are: a conflict between two views, not a conflict between two persons.

As is often written, it’s important to recognize there’s a distinction between a person and his views.  Between a person and his conduct, or a person and his misconduct, e.g. “hate the sin, love the sinner.”

It’s easy to note these distinctions, and their surface logic that it’s best to be polite and not personalize matters.  But these oft-spoken standards usually go out the window after a legal dispute starts.  More often than not, legal proceedings are made personal and taken personally.

But not this time.  Which is more than good.

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Unemployment: The Legal Decision-Maker Isn’t Your Friend (Or Enemy)

March 10, 2010
Angry judges and steadfast court reporter
Image by beingkatie via Flickr

If you are an employee seeking unemployment benefits, and you will be talking to an unemployment agency phone interviewer and/or administrative judge, please avoid a common pitfall: don’t assume that the unemployment representative will identify with you, and will be receptive to you complaining about your former employer.

An unemployment representative isn’t your friend.  That representative won’t be receptive to complaints or adjectives,  e.g they won’t want to hear you saying your former employer was “unfair,” “wrong,” “lying,” etc.  A friend or acquaintance (especially one who knows and trusts you) may well be open to accept your opinions, labels and conclusions at face value.  But again, an unemployment interviewer or judge is not your friend.  They don’t know you from Adam, and don’t know the employer from Adam.  You DON’T want their first impression about you to be “This person is a complainer who is telling me what to think without telling me the facts.”

While an unemployment interviewer or judge isn’t your friend, they are not your enemy either.  They don’t want to hear the employer hand-feed them a bunch of conclusions either.  If the employer does the things I am telling you not to– and the employer tells the unemployment representative long-winded sentences with negative labels and conclusions– then that will likely serve to your benefit, because the unemployment rep won’t view that as credible coming from the employer either.

An unemployment interviewer and judge want the facts.  As such, they will ask you factual questions: who, what, where, when, why, how.  If you respond to these factual questions with factual answers — and you discuss persons, places, statements, and actions in factual terms (“My boss stated the sky is green”) rather than opinionated terms (“My boss is a liar”)– then the unemployment representative will better appreciate your information, better be able to perform their job, and will more likely view you to be credible and reasonable.

I have covered most of the suggestions above within other posts.  But these issues are worth repeating and isolating as the topic of this post, because it is instinctive and common for an employee- claimant to treat an unemployment decision-maker as if they have a sympathetic ear that’s open to adjectives.  If you stick to the facts, and let the unemployment decision-maker decide the labels and conclusions that apply, it is more likely the issues will be decided in your favor.

DISCLAIMER: The information in this blog is not legal advice, nor does it establish an attorney-client relationship between you and Employee Rights Attorney Michael Brown or the law firm of Peterson, Berk & Cross. Legal advice often varies between situations. If you want legal advice for your specific circumstances, you must consult with an attorney (and an employment attorney for employment matters).

For more information about Wisconsin employment lawyer Michael F. Brown and Peterson, Berk & Cross, S.C., please visit here.

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Attitude Matters at Your Wisconsin Unemployment Hearing

March 3, 2010

If you are a Wisconsin employee with an unemployment hearing coming up, my post here has comprehensive information about WI unemployment hearing procedure, preparation, and issues to consider.

Stepping back from those detailed issues, there is another, more fundamental issue to consider: attitude.

Your attitude is important, and can make or break your hearing.

The most effective approach and attitude, in my opinion, are discussed as follows.

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New COBRA Benefits/Help for Laid Off Workers

April 1, 2009

If you were laid off from your job, and have the chance to elect or continue COBRA benefits, please know that a new law was passed which could possibly provide you with federal subsidy money (paid via a tax credit) that would pay for 65% of several months of COBRA costs, leaving you responsible for 35% of those (usually high) costs as compared to 100%.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), “If you were offered Federal COBRA continuation coverage as a result of an involuntary termination of employment that occurred at any time from September 1, 2008 through February 16, 2009, and you declined to take COBRA at that time, or elected COBRA and later discontinued it, you may have another opportunity to elect COBRA coverage and pay a reduced premium.”

Please know there are several specific and detailed eligibility rules to get the new COBRA subsidy, so the purpose of this post is not to tell you that the COBRA subsidy money is guaranteed for your situation.  Rather, this is a heads up that the COBRA subsidy may be available, depending on a laid off worker’s circumstances, and as such is worth you looking into.

As a first matter, you can review information about the new COBRA benefit at this web page of the Department of Labor (DOL), which describes general information about the COBRA subsidy benefit.  From this web page, you can link to more specific information, such as DOL “Fact Sheets” for employees and employers, FAQs, etc.

DOL describes specific employee-eligibility requirements (e.g. required date range that layoff occurred, required formwork, etc.) at this web page.  DOL has answers to employee FAQs here.

Once you have read information from DOL, if you think your situation is such you may be eligible  in the COBRA subsidy, you could then contact the COBRA administrator as identified by your employer (usually, the employer will list a COBRA contact/phone number in its employee handbook, mailed COBRA materials, or other sources).

If you contact the COBRA administrator, they should be familiar with the new COBRA subsidy, whether you are eligible and if it can be applied to your specific situation, what you’d need to do, what your deadline(s) are, and how payments and COBRA benefits would work.

I wish you the best of luck, and hope the COBRA subsidy is of great assistance to many laid off employees.

DISCLAIMER: The information in this blog is not legal advice, nor does it establish an attorney-client relationship between you and Employee Rights Attorney Michael Brown or the law firm of Peterson, Berk & Cross. Legal advice often varies between situations. If you want legal advice for your specific circumstances, you must consult with an attorney (and an employment attorney for employment matters).

For more information about Wisconsin employment attorney Michael F. Brown and Peterson, Berk & Cross, S.C., please visit here.

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Your Comments on Unemployment?

January 17, 2009

I’ve noticed many folks have viewed the unemployment-related posts on this blog, particularly as of late.

If you get a chance, can you please post a comment on whether the unemployment posts were helpful to you, and how your unemployment hearings went?

(Please note: I’m not asking for your name or case details- I am just curious if the blog information was useful).

Thanks!

Michael Brown

Employee Rights Attorney/Blog Author

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Employee Tip: Document Your Job-Hunting Efforts, If You Want to Legally Challenge Your Termination

January 12, 2009

If you are an employee, had your job terminated, and are even thinking you may bring a legal claim against your former employer some day, please know that you should keep documentation relating to your job search efforts.

You may ask, “What does my job-search or new employment have to do with what my old employer did?”  The answer: for most common employment claims (e.g. a claim your termination violated discrimination law), the offending employer can be held responsible for wages you lost (or “back pay”) from the date of your termination forward.  An offending employer could try to legally reduce or eliminate the back pay it has to pay you by claiming that you didn’t look hard enough for a new job (or that you “failed to mitigate damages” in legal speak).

To avoid this potential argument that you failed to mitigate damages or look hard enough for work, you should keep documentation of your job-hunting efforts to remove any doubt that you made reasonable efforts to find work.

What Documentation You Should Keep

To keep good documentation of your job-search efforts, you should:

  • Keep or record information about every prospective employer you contact (e.g. write down the prospective employer’s name, date of call/visit, what job position you inquired about, rate of pay, etc.).
  • Save copies of job-application-related documents (e.g. job ads you reviewed, applications you sent, cover letters, resumes, rejection letters, etc.).
  • Save copies of unemployment-related documents you have (e.g. Wisconsin’s Unemployment division requires that an unemployment claimant-employee contact at least two prospective employers per week, and to keep documentation to that effect).

If you keep these forms of documentation, you will be in a better position for any future legal claim against the employer who terminated your employment.

DISCLAIMER: The information in this blog is NOT legal advice, nor does it establish an attorney-client relationship between you and Employee Rights Attorney Michael Brown or the law firm of Peterson, Berk & Cross. Legal advice often varies between situations. If you want legal advice for your specific circumstances, you must consult with an attorney (and an employment attorney for employment matters).

For more information about Wisconsin employment attorney Michael F. Brown and Peterson, Berk & Cross, S.C., please visit http://www.pbclaw.com/mb.html.

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Beware of the Employer Who Challenges All Unemployment Claims

December 6, 2008

Given the hard economic times, and surge of unemployment, Wisconsin employees have reason to be concerned about being laid off or fired from their jobs.

Unfortunately, WI workers have an additional concern: there are some employers out there who appear to challenge the unemployment benefits of most, if not all, of the workers whose employment is terminated.

A challenge-every-unemployment-claim employer may contract with lawyers or vendors whose sole job is to process unemployment challenges by the company.  Unemployment challenges thereby become a streamlined business function.

Apparently, some employers have decided that they benefit financially by challenging every (or many) unemployment claims; by winning some percentage of these challenges, they save money that would have been paid toward unemployment benefits.  And apparently the employer expects the money “earned” from defeating unemployment claims will be more than the money paid to the vendors and lawyers who work to defeat the employees’ claims.

The employers’ most common basis to challenge unemployment is to claim the terminated employee was fired for “misconduct.” If an employee is legally found to be fired for “misconduct” (defined by WI law to basically mean severe wrongdoing that goes above and beyond poor job performance), then they are not eligible for unemployment benefits.

I expect employers to make a surge of overreaching “misconduct” allegations, and a surge of unemployment benefits challenges, that coincide with the increased job terminations during the economic downturn.

For those Wisconsin workers who are laid off (or expect you may be), I have a post here about pursuing unemployment benefits and preparing for an appeal hearing, should there be a dispute over your unemployment benefits.

Please note: I don’t intend to be fear-mongering here.  Most employers do not challenge unemployment in an assembly-line fashion and reserve their allegations of “misconduct” only for a minority of their terminated employees (i.e. those employees who the employer truly believes committed misconduct).  But the assembly-line unemployment-challengers are increasing in number, and tough economic times will further amplify the trend.  Bottom line: in this day and age you cannot assume your employer will act fairly if you apply for unemployment benefits.

You should keep an eye out to make sure your employer is not one of those who treats unemployment proceedings as a business forum to save money, and who value that function over human rights and survival benefits.  If you are one of the unfortunate persons who are laid off or fired, you should ask around, to see if your employer has routinely challenged unemployment for most or all workers.

Regardless of your employer’s track record with unemployment, you should prepare for an unemployment challenge, and you should consider Plan B alternatives in the event that unemployment benefits are denied.  By being aware of these possibilities and planning to prevent them, you will increase your chances of receiving unemployment benefits.

DISCLAIMER: The information in this blog is NOT legal advice, nor does it establish an attorney-client relationship between you and Employee Rights Attorney Michael Brown or the law firm of Peterson, Berk & Cross. Legal advice often varies between situations. If you want legal advice for your specific circumstances, you must consult with an attorney.

For more information about Wisconsin Employee Rights Lawyer Michael F. Brown and Peterson, Berk & Cross, S.C., please visit http://www.pbclaw.com/mb.html.

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Employee Tip: Filing for Unemployment in WI; Preparing for Appeal and Hearing

July 11, 2008

If you are a Wisconsin employee seeking unemployment benefits, you may wish to consider the information and tips below.  (Please note the following information is for Wisconsin employees only, and is not legal advice; if you want legal advice, you should contact an attorney about your specific circumstances).

You can click here to learn about WI unemployment legal services of the blog’s author, Employee Rights Attorney Michael Brown of Peterson, Berk & Cross.

The information below is intended to supplement information from the State of Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development (DWD), the agency that administers unemployment.  You should review DWD’s website information, “”How To Use Unemployment Insurance Services,” “For Workers,”starting here.  DWD also has a web-based “Handbook,” with detailed information for employee/claimants, here.  You can also read DWD’s FAQs here.

Below are additional tips for employees about the unemployment process.

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