After the Sept. 18th meeting ended, council members apparently reached agreement, because on the morning of Sept. 24th LRB drafts of agreed-on bills were ready for review by council members.
Note: The minutes of the Sept. 18th meeting show that council members went to caucus and did not return from that caucus to announce any agreement. So, agreement must have “happened” after that meeting ended.
Most of the agreed-on proposals are set forth in LRB-4851. Here is a rundown of what the council has adopted.
Raising the maximum weekly benefit rate in 2026 to $395
This $25 increase from the current maximum weekly benefit rate of $370 is paltry and hardly compares to the $914 available in Minnesota, the $602 available in Iowa, and the nearly $500 weekly benefit rate that will be available in Michigan in 2026.
Moreover, council members did not adjust the $500 wage cap. So, the progressive partial wage formula in Wisconsin is now starting to break down. Workers with higher weekly benefit rates will run up against the current $500 wage cap (which means $0 unemployment benefits for that week) rather than still receiving partial unemployment benefits when working more.
For example, a person with the proposed weekly benefit rate of $395 and wages from employment of $500 would be entitled to $80 in unemployment benefits under Wisconsin’s partial wage formula without the $500 wage cap in place. Certainly, someone is better off with $580 in their pocket from working instead of just $395 from not working. By leaving the $500 wage cap in place, this council proposal is now undermining Wisconsin’s partial wage formula and its encouragement of unemployed people to continue working their part-time jobs.
Notably, this slight increase is about the only pro-worker change in the agreed-on bill. Yikes.
Job interview reporting options for employers
The bill adds already-existing work search reasons for finding a person ineligible for unemployment benefits. In general, refusing a bona fide job offer is considered a refusal of work and is treated as a quit without good cause. SeeNorwood v. Adia Personnel Services, UI Hearing No. 94606502KN (22 March 1995) (employee must have good cause for refusing an offer of work in order to remain qualified to receive unemployment benefits) and Kincaid v. Madison Taxi, UI Hearing No. 15001437MD (20 August 2015) (“the refusal of a job offer always raises an eligibility issue,” and employee’s failure to report a job offer, whether bona fide or not, constitutes intentional unemployment fraud).
All of the proposed issues here — declining a job interview, failing to attend a job interview, declining a job offer, and failing to report to work after being hired — will be handled similarly to this already existing and longstanding law.
So, the only real change here is that the Department will maintain a website for employers to report these job interview issues to the Department. Most employers will likely find the reporting requirements more trouble than they are worth, especially since any affected claimant will have the opportunity to appeal and contest any disqualification. The only employers likely to see any benefit from this change are temp employers, who can use this reporting mechanism to disqualify their temps once an assignment ends and interviews for follow-up assignments begin.
Wisconsin is the only state to disqualify SSDI recipients from receiving UI benefits. Additionally, the department is not aware of any other states that offset UI benefits by SSDI received. This proposal will align Wisconsin law with all other states.
In my experience, nearly all disabled workers in Wisconsin qualify for a weekly benefit of $150 or less. Given the 2023 median SSDI benefit $1404 per month, a 50% offset would lead to a $175 offset being applied to these workers — which will be $0 unemployment benefits being paid to nearly all disabled workers in the state. As explained in this letter, states have long ago stopped doing what the Council is now proposing. This proposal is just another effort to extend the discrimination against the disabled found to be illegal in Bemke v. Pechacek.
The big issue is actually catching those guilty of identity-theft. Since identity theft is increasingly a world-wide phenomena based in foreign countries, this penalty is not likely to have any kind of actual impact.
And, noticeably, there are no additional penalties or any other provisions for the much more widespread and easier to enforce mis-classification of workers requirements against employers.
The council previously approved of this proposal, but the legislature took no action on it.
What this proposal ignores is that far too many employers are being hit with penalties and fees for not understanding and having effective on-line access to unemployment right now. Employers are increasingly being hit with penalties and fees which they are only learning about when public levies are being issued.
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In my ten plus years of representing employers in unemployment matters, I have yet to come across a small employer that has any process or even access set up for online management of their unemployment account prior to my representation.
See also the discussion of AB146 in this letter. Accordingly, this proposal actually harms small employers by mandating a filing process almost none of them are using or will use.
Mandatory work search audits of 50% of claimants paid benefits
The council here adopted this management proposal that actually does nothing to make unemployment claim-filing a better experience or more efficient.
more than 50% of those who file initial claims are denied eligibility for unemployment benefits and so never paid anything in the first place.
As shown here, more than 50% of all initial claims are being denied eligibility, and the vast majority of those denials are for non-separation reasons (i.e., a claim-filing issue like able and available status, a work search issue, or the on-line only work registration requirement not being satisfied). Only around 13% of all initial claims are being denied because of a separation issue concerning a quit, misconduct, or substantial fault issue.
At present, Department staff audit the work searches of ALL or NEARLY ALL claimants who are paid unemployment benefits. Auditing work searches of claimants who are never paid any unemployment benefits accomplishes nothing and is simply creating busy work for everyone.
So, this management proposal does little more than reflect what the Department is already doing voluntarily.
Mandated identity proofing and database comparisons for claim-filing
None of these proposals and techniques, however, get at the truly difficult problems of people filing unemployment claims with stolen credentials or making up on-line credentials with personal information available on the dark web.
To stop that kind of identity theft, the Department needs to put in place measures for contacting claimants and employers at their old or available information to verify that a new initial claim is truly connected to that individual. In addition, the Department needs to advertise to explain the ongoing and growing problem of identity theft to all involved.
Note: for some reason, a change in the management of these funds with the program integrity fund are drafted separately.
What these proposals mean for Wisconsin’s workers
When the odds of a likely recession are growing daily (and that coming recession is looking more and more to be quite severe), these proposals fly in the face of what should be happening to make unemployment easier to accomplish, more robust to administer, and more effective in fighting a recession.
For the sake of a $25 increase in the maximum weekly benefit rate, more administrative claim-filing hurdles as well as obstacles for employers and busy work in general are being put in place. Disabled workers are again being treated as second-class workers. And, nothing is being done to address the major but quite solvable legal problems with unemployment:
