Above the Law column:
Unemployment insurance claims are up on the heels of the biggest monthly layoffs in November since 1974, but some labor advocates say the numbers do not reflect the “contingent workers” who are left with no financial backstop.
Many of the people losing their jobs fall through the gaps in unemployment insurance laws, leaving them with no right to benefits despite years of labor.
About 30 percent of the nation’s work force are “contingent workers” who work at part-time jobs or are self-employed, said Robert Reich, former Clinton administration labor secretary and now a University of California at Berkeley public policy professor. Despite workweeks that can exceed full-time hours, most state laws provide no unemployment insurance for them.
“Their ranks are growing very, very large,” Mr. Reich said. “We’ve gotten to the tragic situation where we have joblessness soaring and a huge hole in our joblessness safety net.”
One of the workers who worries about whether unemployment insurance will backstop his family of five is Joe St. John, who works two part-time jobs as a school bus driver and limousine driver in the Detroit area.
He lost his full-time job as a cement truck driver two years ago when his employer’s company merged with a competitor, then eliminated his position.
“Even with the wife working, we barely have enough to get by,” Mr. St. John said.
Other truck drivers he knows worked as independent owner-operators, which means they are ineligible for unemployment insurance.
At least one of them is getting desperate after losing his job.
“He doesn’t have anything to fall back on,” Mr. St. John said. “There’s just not any hope out here.”
Meanwhile, homeless shelters nationwide report a rise in people asking for assistance.
Mr. Reich said the laws need to be updated to reflect the entire spectrum of the nation’s modern work force.
“Today, only 37 percent of unemployed workers collect jobless benefits,” Mr. Reich said. “Low-wage workers among this group are especially hard hit.”
He favors legislation pending in Congress to extend unemployment insurance to unemployed workers searching for part-time jobs.
The Senate version of the Unemployment Insurance Modernization Act was sponsored by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy with Democratic co-sponsors that included Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. It would give states $7 billion to pay for expanding the list of workers who could qualify for jobless benefits and replenishing state trust funds.
Some state legislators want Congress to release the money to them from the federal unemployment trust fund with no conditions placed on it.
Congress already extended the length of unemployment insurance benefits with legislation approved Nov. 20. It gives unemployed workers seven additional weeks of benefits in many states and 13 weeks in states with unemployment rates over 6 percent.
Nationwide, the unemployment rate stood at 6.7 percent by the end of November.
Arkansas, California, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio, South Carolina and Wisconsin report they have less than six months of funds remaining in their unemployment trust reserves. California is paying as much as $27 million a day in unemployment benefits.
The fallout from some workers who want unemployment insurance benefits but whose applications were denied eventually will fall on courts and state administrative agencies, according to the National Employment Law Project.
Other workers skip the appeals process when their claims are denied.
“Some are confused; some don’t want to bother; some don’t understand the process; and there are probably dozens of other reasons,” said Judy Conti, federal advocacy coordinator for the National Employment Law Project.
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