Mass. considering unemployment benefit change to help lower-income workers
Antonio Caban/SHNS
The Massachusetts Senate
Amid a pandemic-prompted reassessment of the state's unemployment system, some lawmakers and labor advocates want to secure reforms that would make jobless aid more accessible to lower-wage workers or those with varying schedules.
Supporters pressed a suite of bills before the Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development that would change eligibility requirements and benefit formulas. Several of the proposals, including one from committee Vice Chair Rep. Tram Nguyen and co-chair Sen. Patricia Jehlen (H 2033/S 1214), would calculate benefits over two calendar quarters rather than the current system based on one quarter with higher earnings.
That change, Nguyen said, would modernize a system that has been in place for decades and would help lower-wage workers whose hours and income are often unpredictable, such as those in the restaurant industry and nursing aides.
"They work for the hours and wages their employers have available and are affected by mandatory overtime, slowdowns, late payments of wages, et cetera, which for most of our vulnerable workers can arbitrarily shut them out of the unemployment system," Nguyen, an Andover Democrat, told her colleagues at a Tuesday hearing.
Some of the bills before the committee, including the Nguyen-Jehlen legislation, also call for setting a benefits floor and a cap based on the average weekly wage of all workers. Supporters said that system would both ensure that lower earners receive enough to survive and would prevent workers from receiving more in unemployment benefits than they would while employed.
"If you were struggling to get by while you were still employed, as so many people are, it's going to be increasingly difficult to survive on an unemployment benefit that's only half of that," said John Drinkwater, a workforce development specialist with the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. Industry groups have said that generous benefits pose an obstacle to drawing people out of unemployment and into job openings.
n the wake of a flood of joblessness that drained the state's unemployment insurance trust fund, a group of lawmakers, business groups, labor leaders and academic experts are studying the state's unemployment system with a charge to compile recommendations by Dec. 15 for ensuring the system's long-term solvency.
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