Unemployment benefits to include workers who refused unsafe jobs

The Biden administration has expanded unemployment benefits to workers who refused job positions due to COVID-19 unsafe concerns.

The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program was designed only for workers not covered by traditional unemployment benefits. Now, the government initiative makes the program more inclusive. It is including laid-off applicants who were denied as they turned down a job offer because it did not comply with Covid-19 health standards.

According to Eli Rosenberg´s report for the Washington Post, workers eligible under the new guidelines will receive backdated payments for unemployment claims dating to the beginning of the pandemic, when the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program was created to help gig workers, self-employed workers and others who stopped working to take care sick of a sick relative or take care of a school-aged child.

Workers at unsafe workplaces will be required to attest, under the threat of perjury, that their employer was not in compliance with either local, state or national standards about the coronavirus, such as rules related to social distancing, disinfecting, and mask-wearing, the DOL said.

The provision seems targeted at the roughly 37,000 people who were denied unemployment insurance after being laid off and declining to return to work last year, about four times the level from 2019.

Unsafe conditions

However, the move will have little effect on the 1.23 million people who have been denied unemployment insurance after voluntarily quitting work.

The new guidelines do not appear to help people who quit work in the last year because they felt unsafe.

You can read: Unemployment benefit for Pennsylvania and NJ starting this week

“Workers have been in this situation where they have had to choose between accepting work that puts them at risk of covid-19 exposure or refusing such work and then being denied unemployment benefits,” said Suzan LeVine, principal deputy assistant secretary for employment and training.

“The action that we’re taking today helps alleviate that decision, to alleviate that tension. We know that the losses have fallen hardest on communities of color. And if we intend to build back better, we need an unemployment system that covers as many workers who have historically struggled to access benefits,” Levine said.