HOUSE BILL REPORT

SSB 5232

As Amended by the House

BYSenate Committee on Commerce & Labor (originally sponsored by  Senators Warnke, Lee, Vognild, Smitherman and Wojahn)

Modifying manner in which base years and benefit years are established for purposes of unemployment compensation.

House Committe on Commerce & Labor

Majority Report:  Do pass with amendments.  (9)

      Signed by Representatives Wang, Chair; Cole, Vice Chair; Fisch, Fisher, R. King, O'Brien, Sayan, C. Smith and Walker.

Minority Report:  Do not pass.  (2)

      Signed by Representatives Patrick and Sanders.

House Staff:Chris Cordes (786-7117)

AS PASSED HOUSE APRIL 16, 1987

BACKGROUND:

To be eligible for unemployment compensation benefits, a claimant must have worked 680 hours in his or her base year.  The base year is defined as the first four of the last five completed calendar quarters prior to the date of application for benefits.  The hours the employee worked in the fifth quarter are not used to establish eligibility in that base year.  Those hours may be used, however, in a subsequent claim.  If a subsequent claim includes the previous claim's "fifth quarter" in the new base year, then the claimant must meet additional requirements to establish eligibility.

Some claimants who are not eligible for an initial base year may become eligible by waiting to file a claim at the end of the next completed calendar quarter.  At the time of the new filing, the "fifth quarter" wages will become part of the new base year and will be used to compute eligibility.  To qualify in this manner, a claimant could experience as much as a three month delay in receiving benefits.

SUMMARY:

The "base year" for the purposes of unemployment compensation claims is either the first four of the last five completed calendar quarters or the last four completed calendar quarters immediately preceding the claimant's benefit year.  In determining the base year, the Employment Security Department is required to initially use the first four of the last five completed calendar quarters as the base year.  If a benefit year is not established using the first method, the department must use the last four completed calendar quarters as the base year.

In computing the alternative base year, the department is not required to make employer contacts, but must use wage information as it becomes available to the department record systems.

If a claim is established based on the last four completed calendar quarters, then a subsequent claim may not use hours that were used in establishing the first claim.

Fiscal Note:      Requested April 6, 1987.

House Committee ‑ Testified For:    Jeff Johnson, Washington State Labor Council; Robin Zukoski, Evergreen Legal Services; Dinnem Clary, Puget Sound Legal Assistance Foundation.

Neutral:  Graeme Sackrison, Employment Security Department.

House Committee - Testified Against:      Dale Tuvey, Employer Advisory Services; Clif Finch, Association of Washington Business.

House Committee - Testimony For:    Some unemployed workers must wait as much as three months before their wage records become available to enable them to qualify for benefits.  Many workers are unable to support themselves financially during this lengthy wait.

House Committee - Testimony Against:      The cost of requiring the Employment Security Department to make special wage requests from employers when wage records are not already in the department system is too high for both the department and employers.  This expensive system will not give claimants any more benefits than those to which they are already entitled.