FL GOP Legislature proposing to cut unemployment benefits from 26 to 20 weeks

[seafan]

AND,

.... deny benefits for employee "misconduct," force workers to accept job offers that pay at least 80 percent of their previous wage, or to accept any offer that paid as much as their unemployment benefit, once they've been out of work for more than 12 weeks.


This, under the radar, while Tea Party Governor Rick Scott ripped apart Florida's high-speed rail project yesterday.




Florida Legislature proposal would trim employers' rising costs by reducing unemployment benefits

By Marcia Heroux Pounds
Sun Sentinel

February 17, 2011 at 3:45 p.m

Florida's legislature is weighing big changes to unemployment benefits that don't favor the worker.

One proposed bill would cut initial benefits from 26 to 20 weeks, deny benefits for employee "misconduct," force workers to accept job offers that pay at least 80 percent of their previous wage, or to accept any offer that paid as much as their unemployment benefit, once they've been out of work for more than 12 weeks.

"The cuts proposed in Florida are by far the harshest of anywhere I've seen in the country," said George Wentworth, a lawyer for a national advocacy group for the unemployed.

The House Finance and Tax Committee was scheduled to consider the bill on Thursday.

At issue is how to tame a $2.07 billion deficit in the state's unemployment insurance trust fund. A Republican-dominated legislature, sympathetic to employer concerns, has proposed changes that would reduce the burden on business to pay off the debt.

.....

If the bill passes, Florida would reduce unemployment pay to 20 weeks when most states offer 26 weeks to their jobless.

Julia Sala, a paralegal who was laid off this week for the second time in recent months, said Florida's benefits should be kept at 26 weeks "so people could at least try and keep their heads above water." She is one of about 300 people laid off from the Ben-Ezra & Katz law firm in Hollywood. She took a $15,000 pay cut to join the foreclosure law firm after losing her 11-year job at another law firm in December 2010.

Sala said Florida's $275 weekly unemployment benefit — one of the lowest in the nation— won't go far enough to pay her family's $1,600 monthly rent for their home and other expenses. "I don't want to take unemployment. But I have to feed four people and pay my electric and rent."

In January, nearly 44 percent of job hunters were unemployed for 27 weeks or longer, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Floridians, they have declared war on all of us.


To these vicious right wing conservatives occupying Florida's government and State houses across the nation, take cover, for we are coming for our rights.



(Cross-posted from GD)