S.C. paying unemployment benefits to workers fired for misconduct

South Carolina pays unemployment benefits to some workers who are fired from their jobs for everything from drug use to stealing to being late to work. It also pays benefits to some workers who quit their jobs voluntarily.

Pamela Butler of Columbia has been out of work since March. She’s willing to take just about any job she can find, so she can’t imagine someone just quitting. “For someone just to quit, you know, and then expect to get benefits, I don’t think that’s fair,“ she says.

The South Carolina Department of Commerce told the governor and state lawmakers at an unemployment roundtable discussion Tuesday that almost 23 percent of the workers in the state who file for unemployment benefits were fired for misconduct. Another 10 percent quit their jobs voluntarily. Not all of them end up getting benefits, but 56 percent of the fired workers and 19 percent of those who quit do collect unemployment, says Department of Commerce director of research Dr. Rebecca Gunnlaugsson.

“A lot of our programs are tailored towards trade skills,“ she told the governor and lawmakers. “But perhaps a lot of our programs need to look at other skills, maybe workforce skills, in terms of teamwork, attendance, tardiness. I think soft skills or people skills is the common term for that.“ 

State Rep. Nathan Ballentine, R-Irmo, says it was eye-opening to him and other lawmakers to find out about the benefits, and he thinks a lot of lawmakers are going to want to look into it.

“If someone loses their job because of drugs, I would hope the state isn’t footing the bill until they find another job,“ he says.

But those fired for misconduct don’t get full benefits, according to the state Employment Security Commission. Deputy Director for Unemployment Insurance Jimmy Jones says workers fired for cause lose anywhere from five to 26 weeks of benefits, depending on the reason they were fired. Someone fired for being tardy wouldn’t lose as much as someone fired for stealing from the company, for example.

Workers who quit might also lose benefits, he says. “The law provides that if anyone quits voluntarily, it has to be attributable to the employment for them to be eligible for benefits right away, meaning that their hours have been cut drastically, a shift has been changed, they’ve been sexually harassed or something on their job,“ he says.

If they quit for a personal reason, even a compelling one, they lose benefits until they return to work and earn at least eight times their weekly benefit amount and then lose that job, he says.

Martin Salazar of Columbia has been out of work so long that he’s exhausted his unemployment benefits, despite having a Masters degree in physics. Yet he does not think people who are fired should automatically be disqualified from getting unemployment benefits. “Sometimes those facts are skewed because the employer doesn’t want to have to pay the benefits,“ he says. “They probably shouldn’t get the benefits, but again, you have to look at the individual stories. I hate to criticize someone without knowing the whole story.“

The latest unemployment figures released Wednesday show South Carolina’s unemployment figure for September was 11.6 percent, an increase from the revised number of 11.4 percent in August. South Carolina’s rate is the fifth-highest in the nation, behind Michigan at 15.3, Nevada at 13.3, Rhode Island at 13 and California at 12.2.