Filing for unemployment? It’s a trap!

Thanks to an information request from one of the members of the Advisory Council, concealment data for the 2014 calendar year is now available. Of 21,694 initial determinations that led to appeal tribunal decisions in 2014, fully 11,040 were initial determinations that found claimant concealment. That is, nearly 51% of the initial determinations in 2014 concerned (and found) claimant concealment.

Of these 11,040 initial determinations, however, only 470, or 4.25% of the total, were appealed. Appeal tribunals overturned 216 or 46% of these 470 concealment appeals and affirmed 254 of these concealment cases. In 2014, the Labor and Industry Review Commission heard 196 concealment appeals and only affirmed 34 appeal tribunal decisions. The Commission overturned nearly 63% (123 cases) of the appeal tribunals that found concealment, and the Commission remanded 20% (23) of the 2014 concealment cases that reached it for additional evidence. That is, only 92 (34 affirmed by LIRC and 58 never appealed to LIRC) concealment decisions out of 470 appeals — i.e., 20% of the concealment appeals — were actually confirmed as concealment after review of some kind. So, while very few concealment cases are appealed, those that are appealed are usually overturned either by the appeal tribunal or the Commission.

And, given what has happened in the concealment cases the Commission has overturned — see, e.g., O’Neill v. Riteway Bus Service, Inc., UI Hearing Nos. 15600518MW and 15600519MW (28 May 2015) (“ALJ placed the burden of proving concealment on the wrong party. The ALJ stated that it was the employee’s burden to prove that there was no concealment. This is incorrect. As the commission and the department have stated for decades, the burden to establish that a claimant concealed information is on the department.“) (emphasis in original) and Dabo v. Personalized Plus Home Health, UI Hearing Nos. 14609522MW and 14609523MW (16 April 2015) (“The employee, as a non-native English speaker, missed the ‘did you work’ part of the multi-part question. It is a common mistake, one long acknowledged by the department.”) — it seems that many of the cases that are alleging concealment do not contain actual concealment.

Since less than five percent of concealment determinations are ever appealed, however, the Department has had a relatively unchecked hand in charging claimants with concealment. Unemployment claims, then, have essentially become a vehicle for alleging concealment against claimants. As they say in a galaxy far, far away: