Employers’ proposed notice to claimants

One of the requirements of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, Pub. L. 116-127, was that states require employers to provide individualized notification of the availability of unemployment benefits to employees at the time of their separation from employment. This requirement was essential for some of the administrative funding available from the Families First Act.

States that did not yet have this requirement, like Wisconsin, were to implement this requirement by emergency rule within 60 days of the passage of the Families First Act. See UIPL 13-20 (22 March 2020) at 3-4.

The Families First Act was signed into law on 18 March 2020. So, Wisconsin needed to have an emergency rule implementing this requirement no later than 17 May 2020.

There is so far no emergency rule (Wisconsin did issue a scope statement, 018-20, on 30 March 2020 for such a rule). At the last two meetings of the Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council, there has been vigorous debate about creating the needed emergency rule.

The big questions: Why this delay and such debate?

What currently exists

It helps to know what is currently required for notice of unemployment benefits, a poster:

Notice-posters as to claiming unemployment benefits. Each covered employer shall keep employees informed about unemployment insurance under ch.108, Stats., by posting appropriate notice-posters supplied by the unemployment insurance division. The notices shall be permanently posted by each such employer at suitable points in each of the employer’s work-places and establishments in Wisconsin. Suitable points for posting the notices include: on bulletin boards, near time clocks, and other places where all employees will readily see them

DWD 120.01.

Failing to provide this poster allows an employee to backdate a claim for unemployment benefits.

The administrative rules provide for a waiver of the notification requirement if exceptional circumstances exist. An exceptional circumstance exists if the employe was not aware of the duty to notify the department of her intent to initiate a claim and her most recent employer failed to post or maintain a notice as to claiming benefits. Wis. Admin. Code § DWD 129.01(4)(c). It is the employer’s obligation to post UI posters at suitable points where all employes will readily see them. See Wis. Admin. Code § DWD 120.01.

Gadzinski v. Thomson Newspapers Inc., UI Hearing No. 00401683AP (7 Sept. 2000).

What the Department has done

So, it would seem that all the Department needs to do is create an additional requirement for employers to provide individualized notice about unemployment benefits to employees at the time of their separation.

For some reason, however, the Department did not get around to even presenting a proposed emergency rule until the July 16th meeting of the Advisory Council, well after the May 17th deadline.

Note: Other emergency rules, like job search changes, EmR2006, not charging employers interest for delayed tax contributions, EmR2011, and waiving experience rating changes for employers for their pandemic-related layoffs, EmR2018, were all done without waiting for the Advisory Council.

This proposal creates a new DWD 120.02. The Department explains that:

(14) Summary of Rule’s Economic and Fiscal Impact on Specific Businesses, Business Sectors, Public Utility Rate Payers, Local Governmental Units and the State’s Economy as a Whole (Include Implementation and Compliance Costs Expected to be Incurred)
The proposed rule is expected to have an economic impact on employees, who may be more likely to file timely claims for unemployment insurance. The proposed rule is expected to have an economic impact on employers because employers will need to provide notice of the availability of unemployment insurance at the time of separation of employment. However, employers may provide notice to employees electronically, so employers may be able to limit the fiscal impact of this rule to minimal staff time to send an e-mail or text message to the separating employee.

(15) Benefits of Implementing the Rule and Alternative(s) to Implementing the Rule
The benefits of implementing this rule are that claimants who are separated from employment will have timely notice of the availability of unemployment insurance, so that they will be less likely to attempt to backdate their claim. The department may save staff time under this rule if more unemployment insurance claims are timely filed and fewer claimants seek to backdate claims.

(16) Long Range Implications of Implementing the Rule
The long range implications of this rule are that more employees will have timely notice of the availability of unemployment insurance benefits so they will be more likely to file their claims timely and less likely to seek to backdate their claims.

At the July 16th meeting of the Advisory Council, only one management representative was present (and so the council lacked a quorum). This management representative, moreover, voiced heated opposition to this change, as it would potentially give employees a few more weeks of unemployment benefits when the required notice was lacking.

The proposed rule states:

DWD 120.02 Notice at Separation.
(1) Each employer shall provide notification of the availability of unemployment insurance to employees at the time of separation from employment by at least one of the following methods:
(a) Letter.
(b) E-mail.
(c) Text message.
(d) Flyer.
(e) Any other department-approved method designed to give immediate notice to employees of the availability of unemployment insurance at the time of separation.

(2) If the circumstances of the separation make immediate notice under this section impossible, the employer shall provide notice to the employee as soon as possible.

(3) Notice under this section shall include content approved by the department. Note: Approved content for the notice under this section is available online at https://dwd.wisconsin.gov/dwd/publications/ui/notice.htm.

(4) An employer’s failure to comply with this section constitutes exceptional circumstances over which the claimant has no control under s. DWD 129.01 (4) (f) unless the employee was aware of the availability of unemployment insurance.

Note: The effective date of this proposed emergency rule is 2 Nov. 2020, in order to allow time for employers to comply with this requirement.

The August 20th meeting continued with these concerns. Management representatives questioned why this change needed to be permanent (there was no sunset provision and the Department intended the emergency rule to eventually become a permanent rule). The Department explained that federal law and guidance mandated this permanent change.

As set forth in the rule, this notice could easily be included in a final paycheck, the Department explained. If done that way, at most an employee could claim would be one, two weeks at the most (because of delays in the final paycheck).

Janell Knutson and Andy Rubsam tried to calm management representatives’ anxiety by explaining that claimants who tried to get their claims back-dated would face a high hurdle for accomplishing that task. If the person had ever filed for unemployment before or if the claimant acknowledged seeing the employer’s unemployment poster (even a poster that might exist), then the Department would find that there was no basis — no exceptional circumstance — to allow the claim to be back-dated despite the requirement for individualized notice in this proposed rule.

Note: This legal “application” of the individualized notice requirement essentially makes the whole issue moot except in very rare circumstances — i.e., the Department’s motivating goal for several years now.

Management representatives were not satisfied with this legal narrowing of the proposed notice requirement (which in any case will be applied by the Department and drew no response from labor representatives). So, into caucus to discuss this proposal the Department, management representatives, and labor representatives went.

The solution they reached was to append a sentence to the end of sub-section (4) of the proposed emergency rule:

If the employer meets the requirements of s. DWD 120.01, the employee is deemed to be aware of the availability of unemployment insurance for the purposes of this subsection.

In other words, the poster requirement will satisfy the requirement for individualized notice. Huh?

Apparently, the US Dep’t of Labor is not happy with this change to the proposal, as the Department has yet to actually introduce this proposal as an emergency rule (the Dep’t of Labor needs to approve proposed changes in law as being in compliance with federal requirements).

Note” I am speculating here, but the lack of approval is not surprising. UIPL 13-20 Change 1 (4 May 2020) at I-1 states:

Question: My state law already includes a requirement that employers post a notice at their worksite that informs workers of the availability of UC. Is this sufficient?

Answer: No. Under Section 903(h)(2)(A), notice to workers must be provided individually and at the time of separation. As discussed in UIPL No. 13-20, the state does have significant flexibility in the method of communicating this requirement to employers, as well as the form in which employers provide the notice to employees (such as letters, emails, text messages, or flyers given or sent to the individual receiving the information).

In situations where the existing state law does not already satisfy this requirement, the state may have to amend its statute or issue regulations. The Department recommends that the state consider issuing emergency regulations to satisfy this requirement for Allotment I funds in light of the statutory requirement that these grant payments be made within 60 days of the enactment of EUISAA.

So, nothing is happening just yet on something so minor as providing employees notice of unemployment benefits when there is an employment separation. This episode says much about the actual agenda of the Department during this economic crisis, and that agenda certainly is not all that concerned with the needs of employees.

Indeed, because of its inaction, the Department may well need to repay administrative funding it has already received. Sigh, still more policy choices that ultimately hurt workers.

Update (1 Oct. 2020): The proposed emergency rule is in effect starting on Nov. 2nd. Any employer that has an unemployment poster in the workplace or a virtual unemployment poster will NOT be subject to this requirement of providing an employee individualized notice at the time of separation or reduced hours. As Department attorneys advised (see above), all that an employer needs to do is provide notice of this poster at some point during the employment relationship. Really, why have a rule when it does not matter.

Update (6 Oct. 2020): As expected, the fiscal impact of this new non-requirement is minimal. The Department explains (emphasis supplied):

“Consistent with the new federal law, this rule adds a requirement that employers must also notify employees of the availability of unemployment insurance at the time of separation. Employers who fail to provide this notice may have additional benefits charged to their unemployment insurance account in the Trust Fund if the employee is given additional time to file an initial claim due to the employer’s failure to give notice. Additional time to file an initial claim is only given to claimants who were unaware of the requirement to file for unemployment insurance benefits, so it is expected that the fiscal effect on employer unemployment insurance accounts will be minimal.

“Employers may incur an additional expense in providing notice under this rule if they elect to provide notice in paper form by, for example, mailing a letter to the employee. However, employers may provide electronic notice, such as e-mail or text message, to employees. Electronic notice is not expected to create new out-of-pocket costs for employers.”

Update (13 Oct. 2020): Here is the official page for the emergency regulation.

Update (14 Oct. 2020): Employer counsel agree that a poster in the break room satisfies this requirement.

Update (4 Nov. 2020): Another employer-side counsel agrees that this notice requirement is in reality inconsequential:

What Are the Consequences for Not Giving Immediate Written Notice?

The DWD did not create a penalty to the employer for noncompliance with the new rule. However, failure to comply may provide “exceptional circumstances over which the claimant has no control,” allowing a separated former employee to file backdated or otherwise untimely applications for unemployment insurance benefits. However, it appears this is only true if the employer is also violating the poster requirement of DWD §120.01.

As this post also notes, there is no new poster or poster requirement alongside this new regulation. So, this new requirement does not actually mean anything.

What is concealment?

A bill is going forward for creating a seven year ban on benefits after two instances of concealment — aka two strikes and you’re out.

Basic matters in this debate turn on what exactly is concealment and how is concealment uncovered. A case on appeal to the Labor and Industry Review Commission (LIRC or Commission) illustrates how the Department of Workforce Development (DWD or Department) is handling these matters.

In this case, the claimant worked as event waitstaff for a hotel. He received an hourly wage around $4 per hour and a tip based on a percentage of the fee the customer paid for the event (those tips added anywhere from $50 to $300 to his weekly earnings). But, those tips went directly to the hotel, and so the claimant could not know the tip amount he earned until he received his bi-weekly check (and those tips were combined for the two-week pay period).

Unemployment benefit claims are filed on a weekly basis, however. Since he did not know what his tips were for each week, he called the Department to ask about how to file when he only knew his hourly wages. The Department representative told him the Department would get the weekly tips information from the employer when it completed its UCB-23 form about his weekly work for that employer. The difference between the hourly wages he reported and the total wages the employer reported would then be deducted from unemployment benefits in a subsequent week.

Such advice is certainly viable. The claimant does not know his weekly tips when filing, only the employer does. So, while there would be a week or two lag in what his correct benefit amount is, at least the corrected wage information from the employer would lead to corrected unemployment benefits.

But, in this claimant’s case, the employer never returned those weekly UCB-23 forms. And, for six years this happened. Not until the claimant took a second job and was discharged from that job did the Department finally act on the information that the claimant had not been reporting his weekly tips income (again, because he did not know that tips income when filing his weekly claims). The Department is charging this claimant with concealment for not reporting his tips income.

But, why did it take six years for the Department to act on this issue? First, Department representatives have discretion about when to note their advice to claimants. Naturally, when that advice is that there is no issue or problem as perceived by that Department representative, Department representatives usually do NOT note that there is NO issue with a claim filing. Only when there IS an issue will they usually note that something needs follow-up investigation in Department records.

Second, the Department could have seen a problem when the employer filed its quarterly unemployment tax returns. Those returns would have showed both the hourly wages and tips paid to the claimant. But, the Department does not check the accuracy of the claimant’s weekly reporting with those tax returns, except when those returns show wages being paid and the claimant has reported NO earnings from that employer. That is, the Department only compares a claimant’s weekly claim reporting to an employer’s unemployment tax reporting to determine if the claimant has failed to report any wages from the employer (moreover, the Department does not even make this comparison until six months later — aka the second quarterly tax return — for a claimant). Since the claimant in this case reported his hourly wages, no flags were raised despite the difference in what the employer reported on its quarterly tax returns.

NOTE: There are more timely ways to handle wage reporting discrepancies than relying on quarterly tax reports from employers. I have repeatedly suggested to the Department and the Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council mechanisms for matching claimants’ wage reports to employers’ tax withholding data. See, e.g., Findings of the unemployment audit (January 2013 e-mail message to Lutfi Shahrani and Scott Sussman describing a withholding match in other states). Neither the Department nor the council has demonstrated any interest in such mechanisms.

Third, even if the employer had supplied the weekly UCB-23 forms, the Department’s currently practice is only to note those discrepancies and adjust future unemployment benefits for those discrepancies (i.e., as the Department representative told the claimant, the claimant’s future unemployment benefits would be adjusted for the tip income not reported on the weekly claim certification). No flags will be raised about either the amount or quantity of those discrepancies until a new, separate investigation into concealment is instituted at a much later date.

In all, these three factors demonstrate that the Department really has no way of catching on-going mistakes in weekly claim certification except through a concealment investigation that occurs months or years (or even six years in this case) after the problem started. Instead of addressing these institutional deficiencies, the Department makes the claimant responsible for any mistakes in his claim-filing. Here, even though the claimant did not know and could not know his weekly tips income when filing his weekly unemployment claims, the Department still considers him responsible for including that income in each weekly claim he made. And, it is his fault the Department took six years to figure out what was going on when it alleged concealment against him. His mistake constitutes concealment regardless of his intention, his confusion, his employer’s inaction, or the departmental advice he received.

The Commission, however, has required that concealment actually be intentional. See, e.g., LIRC responds to DWD’s concealment agenda. So, the Department and the Advisory Council now seek to change the definition of concealment to make it nothing more than mere mistake and to prevent claimants from contending they were confused, disabled in some way, or the recipient of bad departmental advice. See Concealment redefinition approved: Watch out claimants. With this new definition of concealment, claimants who make mere mistakes in their weekly claim filing will be subject to severe concealment penalties.

NOTE: To understand how severe concealment penalties are, consider this example. Suppose a claimant with a weekly benefit rate of $200 under reports part-time wages of $78 on a weekly claim instead of $87, a mistake of $9. So, instead of $167 in unemployment benefits that week, the claimant should have received only $161 in unemployment benefits, a difference of $6. When concealment is at issue, however, neither the $6 difference nor the $167 actually received is the amount at issue. Rather, the entire $200 potential weekly benefit must now be repaid for that week. Furthermore, there is now a 40% (15% prior to the new state budget) administrative penalty ($80 in this case) that also must be immediately repaid. And, future unemployment benefits ranging from two, four, or eight times the weekly benefit rate for each week/act of concealment will be lost to the claimant (in this case, $400 for the 2X penalty, or two weeks of no unemployment benefits received). Finally, keep in mind that this example is only for one week. In almost all concealment cases, the Department does not allege concealment until months or years have passed, and so the concealment — since it is usually based on an ongoing mistake — concerns dozens of weeks of unemployment benefits. The claimant who did not report his tips income for six years, for instance, is subject to a repayment demand of $32,000+ and forfeits $50,000+ in future unemployment benefits even though his weekly benefit rate hovered around $130.

Keep in mind, the Department has also been making it easier for claimants to make mistakes on their weekly claim filing through too numerous and too confusing questions for weekly claim filing, see Important and comprehensive concealment analysis from LIRC, new job search requirements that ignore basic mechanisms job hunters use to find work and create hidden traps for those at temp agencies, see numerous posts about job search requirements, and new job search verification protocols, see New job search verification requirement starting, that seem little more than one more mechanism for tripping claimants up.

In these circumstances, claimants should most likely avoid unemployment altogether. The risk of making a mistake and being charged for concealment because of that mistake at some future date for some unknown reason is too great. But, most claimants probably will not know about these new issues when the likelihood of being charged for concealment when making a simple mistake on their claim filing is high. So, the proposed bill which will actually ban claimants from receiving unemployment for seven years is a good thing: it keeps claimants away from a Department that does not have their interests at heart.

NELP: States’ Unemployment Systems Buckled as Jobless Claims Grew

The National Employment Law Project released a report this week describing how state computer systems that are outdated and overwhelmed led to unreliable claims processing and delayed payments.

Some of the highlights:

Even as the demand for unemployment benefits has declined from record levels, thousands of workers have faced significant challenges accessing their UI benefits. The report profiles case studies of recent service disruptions in California, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Nevada.

In California during fiscal year 2011-12, for example, call volumes were such that 17 million out of 72 million calls (24 percent) were not even able to access the automated phone system. Of the nearly 30 million callers who requested to speak with an agent, only 4.8 million callers were successful.

The report calls on Congress to provide additional funding for staffing and information technology upgrades. To address access issues such as jammed phone lines, the report recommends more aggressive federal oversight through customer service standards and targeted enforcement. Not only would these measures facilitate prompt payment for laid-off workers trying to re-enter the labor market, but they would also improve efficiency and increase states’ ability to prevent and detect waste, fraud, and abuse.