At the 17 December 2015, several legislative proposals affecting unemployment benefits were described to the Advisory Council. This legislation includes:
- Returning work search waivers to what previously existed — Employees and employers have begun to voice concerns about how the limitations on work search waivers previously approved by the Advisory Council do not make sense for Wisconsin. No immediate change to the current work search waivers will happen, however. And, whether Wisconsin ever returns to the original rules is uncertain. For instance, there was extended discussion by council members of perhaps allowing employers to designate certain employees for longer waivers because of their skills or high value to the employer but leaving other employees to the now 8/12 week waiver maximum. See my own comments on the proposed regulations.
- Expanded criminal penalties for unemployment concealment — Previously discussed here.
- UI law changes in order to counter recent NLRB decisions — Legislators want to pass legislation that will supposedly undo a recent NLRB decision called Browning-Ferris Industries that re-defined the test for determining when the employees of one company will be treated as the employees of another company (e.g., when the employees of a franchisee or temp agency are really the employees of the franchisor or client company because the franchisor or client company sets the terms and conditions of employment for the employees). NOTE: unemployment is not mentioned once in the decision, so the applicability and purpose — let alone its effectiveness — of the state law changes in this proposed legislation are muddled at best. And, as DWD notes in its memo, the changes could be extremely problematic for some Wisconsin employers.
- Exempting real estate agents from unemployment law — The proposed legislation is intended to remove real estate agents from coverage of any and all employment law and unemployment law issues.
- Whether UI claimants will have their benefits publicly revealed — As DWD notes, this proposed legislation conflicts directly with federal law.
Also, the Department has begun publishing on its website some of the proposals being discussed by council members, including management proposals to add additional claimant disqualifications and labor proposals regarding new penalties for employers who mis-classify their employees as independent contractors and increasing the wage base and tax schedule for employers’ unemployment taxes in order to make the UI fund solvent. NOTE: This 2013 PowerPoint presentation describes what makes or does not make a UI fund solvent. The Department has yet to publish any of its proposals, so this blog remains the sole source for Department-initiated changes to unemployment law. For instance, the Department is still waiting for the Council’s decision on its UI modernization proposal, D15-06.
NOTE (8 January 2016): At the January 7th council meeting, the Advisory Council approved of D15-06 with minor changes that were not detailed.
Wisconsin Unemployment 