Von Dehn v. UCBR –Cmwlth. Court – April 2, 2018 – to be
published
Held:
Claimant who
- was laid off from his full-time union job, and then
- worked one 4-hour shift at an intermittent part-time job, and
- told PT employer not to schedule future work, because it would
interfere with being called back for his FT job
was eligible for benefits, under UCBR v. Fabric, 354 A.2d 905 (Pa. Cmwlth. 1976).
Fabric
When
a claimant who is eligible for UC benefits by reason of separation from
full-time employment experiences a subsequent separation from part-time
employment, “he is rendered ineligible for further benefits only to the extent
that his benefits were decreased by virtue of his part-time earnings.” UCBR v.
Fabric, 354 A.2d 905, 908 (Pa. Cmwlth. 1976). It is the Board’s burden to
“establish that a claimant’s actual benefits would be increased by virtue of
the loss of a part-time job. In other words, the part-time job must have
yielded income in excess of the partial benefit credit … before a claimant can
be denied any benefits because of a voluntary separation.” Id. at 907.
The reason for
the separation from part-time employment is irrelevant to the eligibility
analysis.
[emphasis added] Whether the claimant is
laid off, quits voluntarily, or is fired for willful misconduct, the analysis
is the same. See Richards v. UCBR, 480 A.2d 1338 (Pa. Cmwlth. 1984); Walsh v. UCBR
(Pa. Cmwlth., No. 1248 C.D. 2012, filed
May 13, 2013), 2013 Pa. Commw. Unpub. LEXIS 374 (unreported). In such a
situation, a determination of whether the claimant had a necessitous and
compelling reason for leaving his part-time position has no place in the
analysis of his eligibility for UC benefits.
Here, the Board did not calculate Claimant’s
partial benefit credit, nor did it compare that amount to Claimant’s part-time
earnings from Camp Bow Wow, the PT employer Thus, the Board could not and did not sustain
its burden of demonstrating that Claimant’s separation from Camp Bow Wow
rendered him ineligible for UC benefits. Moreover, the record indicates
Claimant’s earnings from Camp Bow Wow in 2016 could not have affected the
amount of UC benefits to which he was entitled as a result of his layoff by
Full-Time Employer.
