Employer moving business

[JayEmm]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? New York

Without any advance warning, my employer just informed us that he is moving the business within the next week or so to a new location more than 40 miles away from where we are now. That will change my commute from 20miles to 60+ miles one way. Several factors will make it extremely difficult for me to continue working there -

1) My car is currently not reliable enough to make that kind of trip & I cannot afford a new one.

2) I am (nor is the new business location) not anywhere near public transportation nor can I afford it.

3) The move would put me in a position where I'd be two hours away from my Son's preschool in the event of an emergency where I'd have to pick him up.

So my question is, would I be eligible for unemployment insurance if I were not to move with the business?

[pattytx]

There is no way we can tell. You can call the unemployment commission and ask, but generally, there is no bright line that says XX miles difference would qualify you for benefits, but XX - 1 miles will not, regardless of your personal situation with child care or reliable transportation.

[commentator]

If you decide to quit your job, and file for benefits, there will be a lot of factors involved, almost none of which are the reasons you mention in your post. In fact, there is only one reason that I would even mention when filing for benefits. Of course, the reason you will be quitting and filing for benefits is that you will now be traveling 60+ miles each way, when in the past, you had been traveling only 22 (or whatever) miles each way.

I believe, from past postings here, that New York may actually be the one state I have seen that has some sort of spelled out "this far" is considered appropriate commuting distance, but if my memory serves me, it's well under 60 miles each way. Seems like it was given as number of minutes in the commute, not number of miles. So you need to be able to provide both the comparable distance of the commute, and the time of the commute.

If I were you, I would drive this drive to the new location on my own time --at the time of day you would be required to make the commute, see what I'm saying? And measure the time it takes you at that time of day. So if you had a ten minute commute to work and home at your old location, and you now have an hour and a half commute during rush hour across town in heavy traffic you are going to have an excellent chance of being approved. The one thing from your list you can say when you file is that it is not convenient to public transportation. DO NOT mention that public transportation is not affordable for you.

All those other things are personal reasons. They do not factor into unemployment insurance in any way. You have made a career decision that you need to find a job closer to your home, as your employer made a business decision to move the business to a different location.

Do not, repeat DO NOT mention to them that you have an unreliable vehicle, that you would not be convenient to your son's school, or that you can't afford to take the bus. You will of course be required to be able and available for other jobs, and you have to say you are available to commute at least as far as you were commuting at the job in the original location.

They will have to make a decision on this issue. Unemployment in the best of cases will take three to five weeks, more for a decision, so after you quit your job, you will have a long dry spell with no income coming in. Unemployment benefits, even if approved, will be considerably less than you were making at your job. These are factors you will have to consider before quitting.

The one thing you must NOT do if you are going to go the unemployment route is try out the new job location and see if you can do it, then decide you can't, because then it will be a voluntary quit and you will not get the benefits approved. If you quit, you must quit effective the last day you are at the old location, or you will be considered to have accepted the job at the new location and cannot use the commuting distance as a reason to quit.