Employers block unemployment benefits

In Coprorate (sic) America, the scumbaggery never ends, does it?

With unemployment at the highest rate since the Depression, Big Business pulls out all the stops to make sure the unemployed don't even get the benefits they deserve.

Over a quarter of Americans who apply for unemployment are now having their claims challenged by their former employer. In fact, some companies have a policy of challenging every single claim.

How??? And why???

Greedy employers do this because their unemployment insurance rates are based on how much in benefits their former employees collect.

Follow the money, folks, follow the money.

My advice for the employers who challenge workers' claims? Suck. It. Up. Once a person is no longer working for you, you have no business trying to keep them from getting unemployment aid.

This doesn't even account for all the folks who are ineligible for unemployment right off the bat. People who are fired for alleged misbehavior aren't even eligible. So your employer can falsely accuse you of stealing from them, and you'd be out of luck. And with the current system, they'd have an incentive to make a false accusation like this.

And some employers do lie when filing their challenges. They make false allegations against former workers, and with such a stacked system, this strategy works surprisingly well.

It doesn't help matters that courts have taken it upon themselves to expand the definition of worker misconduct. Thirty years ago, minor accidents would likely not have been considered misconduct. Today, with a court system based on matchbook law that's hell-bent on coddling Big Business, it likely would be.

The whole system is based on what the employers want, isn't it? Or O the world will end.

Maybe the government needs to take away employers' power to challenge unemployment claims.

(Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/11/AR2009021104311.html)