New York provides unemployment assistance not just when workers are laid off, but also when a worker’s hours are reduced. Unfortunately, the system for calculating benefits for part-time unemployment assistance for many years was based on the number of days worked during the week without regard to number of hours worked or the amount earned. This caused inequitable results because a worker would receive a 25 percent reduction in benefits for any work at all performed on a single day, whether they worked one hour or ten hours, and whether they made $15 or $150 on that single day.
Recently, the Governor signed two bills S1042A and S7148, which I supported, to correct this issue. These bills ultimately replace the days-based system with an earnings-based system that more appropriately calculates benefits based on a worker’s actual earnings. The full transition to the earnings-based system is not likely to take place until early 2022, so in the interim the legislation codifies an hours-based calculation for partial unemployment assistance, which the Department of Labor has been using temporarily in an ad hoc manner since earlier this year – a significant immediate improvement.
In the wake of the massive job losses beginning last year, I am proud to support reforms to the unemployment insurance system such as this, which will augment the support that workers need when there are layoffs and make sure the system operates in a fair and meaningful way. Two of my bills which passed both houses of the legislature this year, S17 and S18, also improve partial unemployment assistance by promoting the shared work program, which allows for targeted use of partial unemployment insurance by employers to avoid laying off workers. I am optimistic that these bills will be signed soon as well.
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