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If
the road to hell is paved with good intentions -–
which it often seems to be in the legislative
process -– you get to your destination far more
quickly with fog clouding your vision.
To
wit: Two
“well-intended” pieces of legislation, one of
which has passed the House of Delegates and the
other of which squeaked out of the Senate.
In both cases, the chambers were filled with
smoke and hot air. In
both cases, Virginia’s businesses are having their pockets picked in
the name of “family values.”
A
bedrock principle of unemployment benefits is that
you don't get benefits if you quit voluntarily.
The benefits are reserved for people who lose
their jobs through no fault of their own.
House
Bill 1288 knocks a big hole in that that
wall in the name of family values, the
red-white-and-blue, and our brave men and women in
uniform. The
bill would grant unemployment benefits to the spouse
of an active-duty military person who quits a job to
follow a spouse to a new assignment.
Speeches
in support of the legislation, which first failed
49-47 and then passed two days later 51-43, focused
on flag-waving rhetoric about the sacrifice and low
salaries of the active duty serving in Virginia, and
the great economic benefit Virginia reaps from the
military bases.
Unemployment
benefits are paid out of a trust fund that holds the
unemployment payroll tax paid by employers.
It is a dynamic system where the tax rates go
up when the fund is drained, and right now the fund
has been deeply strained by the recession and the
tax rates are going through the roof.
The
trust fund balance of more than $1 billion will dip
to $50 million or less before climbing back over the
next few years. Tax
collections were less than $300 million last year
and should exceed $600 million in 2006, and will be
higher if the benefits or beneficiaries expand. (Not
one dime of that money is provided by the employer
who caused the move in this case, the Defense
Department.)
Unlike
some other so-called “trust funds,” the
legislators cannot spend this money on an unrelated
purpose. But there is nothing that prevents them
from increasing the benefits paid to the voters, I
mean recipients, or granting benefits to new groups
of voters (there I go again). Because
the new benefits have a delayed impact on the tax
rates paid by employers, they usually get away with
it.
Legislators were further befogged by a
misleading economic impact statement, which the
Virginia Employment Commission has since recanted.
The VEC initially claimed the bill add only
about 20 new recipients and drain only $31,000 a
year from the fund – a pittance.
Your
author went to the committee podium to question that
figure, noting that there are 129,000 active duty
personnel in Virginia, and the nature of the job demands regular
relocations. There
could well be 10,000 annual claims -- with most
benefit checks being cashed outside Virginia!
On
Thursday VEC officials admitted their assumptions
were indefensible and they had no idea what the
number of potential claims would be.
Perhaps the Senate will have clearer vision
of the path ahead, but our second example doesn’t
encourage confidence.
Senate
Bill 27 escaped the Senate on a vote of
22-18. It
only got to the floor at all because it was assigned
to a committee chaired by the patron, even though
that assignment was a stretch of the rules.
Once
again, listeners in committee and in the senate
gallery watched a room fill with fog about family
values. The
bill mandates that every employer in Virginia
–- public and private, except the federal
government of course -- give workers four hours
leave if they have kids in school.
The patron spent most of his time in both
venues talking about his “great dad” who came to
all his games and school events.
In
committee he was followed to the podium by speakers
from the PTA, the AFL-CIO, the
Interfaith
Center
and the Virginia Education Association.
The lobbyist for the School Boards
Association allowed his group's name to be used, but
he had the good sense to avoid the microphone.
No
one, not one witness, mentioned a single example of
an employer denying leave to an employee seeking to
attend a school function.
And not one of them mentioned the real heart
of the bill, which follows:
3.
Employers shall not discharge, demote or otherwise
take an adverse employment action against an
employee who requests or takes leave under this
section. Nothing in this section shall require an
employer to pay an employee for leave taken under
this section.
4.
An employee who is demoted or discharged or who has
had an adverse employment action taken against him
or her in violation of this section may bring a
civil action within one year from the date of the
alleged violation against the employer who violates
this section and obtain either (i) any wages or
benefits lost as a result of the violation or (ii)
an order of reinstatement without loss of position,
seniority, wages, or benefits. The burden of proof
in such civil action shall be upon the employee.
The
bill is purely and simply a new way for employers to
get sued. State
law doesn’t mandate leave for any purpose except
reserve military duty and jury duty.
The law is so naked of those kinds of
provisions that this bill had to be grafted onto the
“blue law” provision that workers can’t be
forced to work on their Sabbath.
It
won’t matter if your company has a generous leave
plan in place or a grievance procedure for settling
any complaints. It
won’t matter if you are covered by a union
contract that includes this benefit. You don’t
have to be fired to file suit. If
you didn’t get the raise, if you didn’t get to
move into the office with the window, and even if
your employer granted you leave to go to Johnny’s
class play last spring, you can go to court and
allege you were being punished. Your employer faces
major legal expenses.
Isn’t payback fun?
If
the mandate starts at four hours per parent, it will
become four hours per child very quickly, and then
grandparents will demand recognition, and childless
employees will want official leave for other good
works. In Richmond
each
winter, the supply of fog is endless.
--
February 16, 2004
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