I go to sleep to one outrage and wake up to another.
. But for a growing proportion of U.S. workers, the troubles really set in when they apply for unemployment benefits.
More than a quarter of people applying for such claims have their rights to the benefit challenged as employers increasingly act to block payouts to former workers.
A Quarter as in 25% as in almost a million claims in the last 6 months? WTF? I realize this is at the State level , but many of these employers have national operations.
As an ex-employer, I never laid off an employee, but I did have some quit for all kinds of reasons over the years and I never challenged their unemployment benefits even though I could have. Why would I? If you are taking good care of your workers, your insurance won't go up that much unless the company is laying off mass amounts of it's work force to satisfy wall street and to feed the
self-fulfilling prophecy of a depression.
As this country gets pushed deeper into a shit hole conceived, dug and filled by the GOP, there seems to be no barrier to basic decency that they won't exploit to satisfy simple greed or to insure the safety of their own paycheck.
As noted in this story, as soon as the Washington Post showed up the challenge was dropped. Which suggests they are challenging all of the claims in the hopes they can get many of them to walk away from them. It also suggests that 25% of the job losses were due to bad behavior or voluntary termination. Which leads us into this:
The proportion of claims disputed by former employers and state agencies has reached record levels in recent years, according to the Labor Department numbers tallied by the Urban Institute.
That seems to dovetail into a rising unemployment rate until you see shit like this.
The cost of unemployment insurance has created an industry of "third-party agents" -- companies that specialize in helping employers deal with the unemployment insurance administration. These firms represent employers in disputes with former employees over jobless benefits.
One of the largest is TALX, a St. Louis company active in the Washington area, which claims more than 8,000 clients.
(I'll take a chance on two extra lines here) .
Great just what we need, another "service" industry to challenge unemployment claims in massive numbers so an employer can save a few bucks on unemployment insurance.
Please read this article
Note, I don't normally do many diaries. Two in two days is an all time record for me. But, these are the issues we need to be focused on. Abuse of taxpayer money and corporate America literally getting away with murder when it comes to the treatment of the citizens of this country. Right as we are getting ready to bail a bunch of these crooks out with the tax dollars taken from the chekcs of the people they laid off or are going to lay off.
Normally I would say "how Ironic". But this pegs the OUTRAGE meter way past the red zone. What really pisses me off is that there will be no justice unless someone starts looking into corporate communications regarding these challenges.
There is a story in there of one guy who was getting $380.00 a week which they were using to pay housing expenses who got challenged. That brings it down to the personal level for me. They sent someone down to challenge the guys unemployment benefit that was keeping a roof over his families head, just to save some fractional percentage point on their unemployment Insurance. That goes way past despicable behavior and lands squarely into sadistic behavior for me.
This was the fellow that had the POST show up and that's when the company folded up it's tent and went home.
Do they all take training classes at Blackwater on how to abuse civilian populations?
I hope the Labor Secretary Solis starts by cleaning her own house by getting people in there that will fight against the rampant abuse of workers until such time as Unions can get better organized.