West Virginia / Unemployment Insurance: Not a good employment policy

Every business faces ups and downs, and how a business reacts and adapts to a downturn plays a large part in its success.

During tough economic times, businesses often face difficult decisions and can be forced to lay off valuable, trained employees in order to survive. Not only do businesses lose their skilled employees and the time and resources spent training them, but workers lose their jobs, families lose their incomes and communities lose tax revenue.

Under West Virginia’s current unemployment system, businesses do not have the flexibility to arrange alternatives to layoffs. Instead, the state’s unemployment system incentivizes layoffs, because layoffs are the only cost-saving option our unemployment system supports.

But across the country, more and more states are modifying their unemployment systems to provide employers greater flexibility when facing possible layoffs, through a program called work sharing. The way work sharing works is simple: When facing a temporary downturn, a business can reduce its workers’ hours, while the workers collect partial unemployment benefits based on the reduced hours. This allows the business to temporarily cut costs without resorting to layoffs.

The benefits of work sharing are easy to see. Employees get to keep their jobs and benefits, and avoid any risk of long-term unemployment. Businesses get to save money while keeping their work force intact. And when economic times are better, the business is fully staffed and ready to go, with no need for rehires and retraining.

Choosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor from

via Let’s help WV businesses avoid costly layoffs – WTRF 7 News Sports Weather – Wheeling Steubenville.