Know Your Rights

Know Your Rights

• How to protect your hard earned benefits when the pink slip lands on your desk? You should look into three areas while assessing your rights; Personal Labor Contract with your employer; State Unemployment Benefits and Federal Unemployment Benefits.
• If the reason for termination is not because of discrimination on rights protected by US Constitution like race, sex, etc, or because of the employee's protected status as a whistleblower, or because they were involved in a complaint filed under one of the laws enforced by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), then the termination is subject only to any private contract between the employer and employee or a labor contract between the employer and those covered by the labor contract. For more information on employment rights, visit http://employeeissues.com

Personal Labor Contract

• The foremost thing you should know is to ensure you have integral and up to date information about your unemployment benefits. Here are some points you should look into:
• Severance Pay:While there are no employee severance pay laws that require your employer to offer it, there are also no employee severance pay laws that say you can't try to negotiate it, whether you resign, get fired or laid off. You've got some leverage, because employers typically want to avoid lawsuits, attrition and bad-mouthing. Employers typically base employee severance pay on length of service and weekly salary or wages. For example, as severance pay, your employer might offer you one extra week of salary for each consecutive year that you worked for your employer. For more information, visit http://employeeissues.com/severance_pay.htm
• Accrued PTO:If you have been getting your sick, vacation and such leaves as Paid Time Off (PTO), then you may be entitled to get paid for the accrued PTO that you haven't taken at the time your employment ends.

State Unemployment Rights and Benefits

• All states enforce the doctrine of "At-will employment" to some degree, which stipulates that employment is presumed to be voluntary and indefinite for both employees and employers.
• However, workers who are unemployed through no fault of their own (as determined under state law), and meet other eligibility requirements, may be eligible to receive unemployment benefits.

Unemployment Insurance Benefits:

• Even if you "legally" get fired from a job, your employee rights still might entitle you to collect state unemployment insurance benefits, depending on the circumstances.
• Unemployment benefits vary by state, but generally include weekly subsistence compensation, job-training opportunities, and job-searching and other re-employment assistance for those who qualify.
• State Unemployment Office Web Sites

Extended Unemployment Benefits

• Extended unemployment benefits typically become available through a state unemployment office, when an unusually large number of employees in the state are experiencing job loss for longer than average. Extended unemployment benefits are officially referred to as Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC).
• Extended unemployment benefits are typically authorized in 13-week increments, which are then added to 26 weeks of standard state unemployment benefits. In times of severe unemployment, extended benefits might be authorized more than once or for more than 13 weeks, or both.

Federal Unemployment Rights and Benefits

• Upon termination of employment, some workers and their families (who might otherwise lose their health benefits) have the right to choose to continue group health benefits provided by their group health plan for limited periods of time under the COBRA Extended Health Insurance Benefit Act.
• COBRA temporarily extends only group health insurance benefits. It does not extend disability insurance or life insurance benefits. Extensions of other employee benefits at employment termination are matter of contractual agreement between employers and employees or employers and unions.
• At this writing, your employee rights entitle you to purchase COBRA insurance benefits for 18 or up to 36 months, depending on your circumstances.
• If your COBRA insurance benefits run out before you can become covered by a new employer-provided group health plan, then your employee rights under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) might entitle you to continue purchasing health insurance through a new plan, without pre-existing condition limitations and large premium increases.
• The Federal-State Unemployment Insurance (UI) program, administered by the U.S. Department of Labor's (DOL) Employment and Training Administration (ETA), provides a partial wage replacement for individuals who are unemployed due to a lack of suitable work. http://workforcesecurity.doleta.gov/unemploy/