Continue Unemployment Insurance after quitting new job

[fuh fashion]

CA

I have just quit a new job after realizing after 3 days of work the following:

1. Salary is only $1 more per hour or $100 more per week versus my current UI.
2. New job location is significantly farther than I realized from home (about 20 miles). Plus, traffic on 101N is, needless to say, so horrible!
3. I'm a college graduate with a degree in Psychology and all of my jobs have been related in this field. I feel I didn't fit in a new role that did not match my field of expertise and, well, didn't really require a degree to start with.

I feel I've made a huge mistake from getting too excited and grabbing instantly as soon as it hit me this opportunity called "job". I've been out of work since February. But the new job is just not for me.

Do I have a chance of continuing my Unemployment Insurance, or am I completely doomed?
I have been calling the unemployment compensation office for 2 days to ask their advise and could not get one agent to talk to me. I get directed to an answering machine.

 

[ecmst12]

This will NOT be considered a valid reason to quit a job and you will not get your UC back. You didn't have a choice to accept the job, either, if you'd turned it down that would have disqualified you for benefits as well. You should have kept working at the crappy job until you found a new one.

 

[eerelations]

Why are you posting this question here? It's obvious that it really doesn't matter to you at all whether you can continue your UI benefits because if it did matter to you, you would have asked this question before deciding whether or not to quit your new job.

 

[phase08]

1. Salary is only $1 more per hour or $100 more per week versus my current UI.
2. New job location is significantly farther than I realized from home (about 20 miles). Plus, traffic on 101N is, needless to say, so horrible!
3. I'm a college graduate with a degree in Psychology and all of my jobs have been related in this field. I feel I didn't fit in a new role that did not match my field of expertise and, well, didn't really require a degree to start with.

You knew all this before you accepted the job - although refusing a job also results in denial of unemployment.

By quitting you disqualified yourself for unemployment. But don't take my word for it - go ahead and file.

 

[Mass_Shyster]

1. Salary is only $1 more per hour or $100 more per week versus my current UI.

How does $1 per hour equate to $100 per week. Were you really working 100 hours per week?

 

[commentator]

Because you have accepted the new job, and have actually worked at it, this will probably be the end of your unemployment insurance. But go ahead and file to reopen your claim anyhow. Do not even think about not mentioning this job, because that would be fraud, and they will get the wage records on it anyhow. They may see it differently than we're seeing it here, it certainly doesn't hurt to try.

As someone pointed out, everything you list as a reason why this job was not suitable, you knew before you accepted it. You did not get to the job and then find out you were going to have to crawl naked up chimneys, provide counseling to enraged inmates or wear a bunny suit. Therefore, you voluntarily quit a job which you yourself had determined to be suitable.

You could have had an argument that the job was not suitable if you had been referred on it by the career center system and wanted to refuse the referral. But you've taken it, then did a voluntary self-termination so that settled that.

Were there any dreadful realities about this job you did not notice until you were on site and at work? Anything that was not apparent to you before you accepted the job? That makes a better reinstatement argument. Honestly, a lot further to drive and bad traffic won't do much for your case. Times are hard. It pays less and it's not really in my field are things you could tell before you ever started work.

Any chance you can unterminate? In other words, tell them you've changed your mind, persuade the new employer to let you go back to work and work a while longer. Maybe they'll lay you off or let you go. Maybe you'll find another job that is more suitable. But if it pays even $100 a week more than your unemployment, in today's climate, frankly, that's not bad.

 

[phase08]

Whether or not a job pays only a little more than UE or even less that UE is irrelevant. A person can't just refuse/quit jobs because working there is inconvenient or "unsuitable", and expect to collect unemployment benefits.

Bad traffic? boohoo What a joke. People ride the bus for hours in order to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads.

 

[commentator]

Actually, it does need to be "equivalent" work. The earlier in the worksearch it is for you, the picky-er you can be. Unemployment insurance does not demand that you take a job as a dishwasher if you have been an investment counselor or some other type of professional in any state. And in most states, a job that paid less than your weekly benefit amount for full time work would be below minimum wage. People can work part time and make less than their weekly benefit amount and still continue to draw some of their benefits. In every state.

The idea is that instead of demanding that a person with a good education and potential to get another similar job be required to jump into a lower paying, service type job at the beginning, one is given some time to look for a job similar to what they have had in the past. Even if the service job would hire them, which is not likely, they will be taking up a job that a less qualified person could do, and they will probably move out of the job as soon as something in their field becomes available. It's sort of defeating the system to demand that they take just any old job, as the whole premise of unemployment insurance is that if a person is put out of work through no fault of theirs, they have a bit of breathing space to support themselves and still find another appropriate job. They are not drawing your taxpayer dollars, unemployment is not a needs based welfare system.

But unfortunately, this person accepted the job, went to work, and then looked at the negatives. If she had not accepted a referral to the job from the job service aspect of the state unemployment system, she might possibly, if this is early in her unemployment, have been able to continue to draw. However, she didn't do this, she tried it out first.

The thing that scares me is that I was reading yesterday a blog about people who have been out of work for over 18 months now, and have exhausted all their benefits and extensions. They are finding that even the most lowly and low paying of jobs are not available.

 

[pattytx]

Well, I don't know. But I can tell you that I am now making less than half of what I made in my last permanent job and haven't been able to find permanent work, only temp gigs. I can also tell you that I can pretty much guarantee you that if I had turned down an offer in my field of expertise (although not the management level I had been for years), my UI would have gone poof.

 

[commentator]

I'm sorry if the career or placement center people or whatever have not been nice to you about this aspect of the program. It's sort of subjective, really, sometimes you can fight to refuse an unsuitable job and win, but in these times, they're pretty proud to have jobs to send anyone on, and I guess somebody with lots of good qualifications qualifies for a lot more things, even low paying things. So they're calling you for everything.

Also sad but true, the people in these offices (petty bureaucrats) have more power over people when times are hard. If times were good, you could expect to get another job similar to your old one, or might not ever have lost your old one, and you could tell them to stuff their pitiful low paying jobs where employers want someone to work like a dog for the least they can get by with paying. Human nature being what it is, unregulated free markets will not work. We'd all be working for free for some extra privileged employer.

And in the long run, taking temporary gigs has helped you, because if nothing else, it has really helped extend the time you can actually draw unemployment benefits by giving you those magical things called "re-earnings" which means you will qualify practically forever ( or at least until the economy improves).

 

[phase08]

I see nothing where the OP or anyone else in this thread said they got their job thru the career placement center.

OP said she has left a couple messages and not heard back from UE. She could re-open her claim online or go to the office in person - but I guess the inconvenience of bad traffic prevents her from doing that.

She accepted the job knowing in advance everything she complained about. She quit because "the job wasn't for her"; i.e., she didn't like it and getting there was inconvenient. OP is not entitled to anything.