Unemployment Agency Wrongfully Provides Benefits

The senate subcommittee chairman is questioning the unemployment agency in South Carolina, wondering why the agency provided unemployment benefits to a number of individuals who did not deserve them. The unemployment agency ended up handing out unemployment benefits to several individuals who had been fired from their positions due to misconduct. By providing the benefits to these individuals, the unemployment agency obviously disregarded a law that was put in place back in June. The Senator, Kevin Bryant, has decided to put together a meeting for this week so that the Department of Employment and Workforce can provide an explanation as to why nearly 60 individuals who were fired ended up receiving a total of 20 weeks’ worth of unemployment benefits, even though the law had already been signed and put in place. The new law says that workers who have been fired because of misconduct must automatically be denied unemployment benefits. In fact, Bryan R. Anderson has said, “Some are more offensive than others. A handful are very obnoxious.” He believes that some of the actions of workers who have been fired were so wrong, to the point where the individual(s) should not have received jobless benefits.

In fact, the chairman for the Labor Commerce and Industry subcommittee says that there was one particular worker who ended up receiving full unemployment benefits although the individual had originally been fired from their position because they had sexual intercourse while at work. Behavior like this is not acceptable and if an individual is fired due to these circumstances or other obnoxious circumstances, they are expected not to receive jobless benefits at all.

Senator Kevin Bryant was a co-sponsor of the law that was originally signed back in June, especially because it would help to save money on the amount of money paid out to workers who had been fired, in the form of unemployment benefits. The state law has already decided that those guilty of gross misconduct would be disqualified for all types of jobless benefits. On the other hand, some individuals may simply deal with a reduction in the amount of benefits received, ultimately depending on the severity of the circumstances and the particular type of misconduct that the worker is originally guilty of. When the circumstances where broken down into different categories, hundreds of them involved the use of illegal drugs while only several involved gross misconduct and/or general misconduct. Each of the cases are dealt with individually as a way of deciding whether or not the individual should be eligible for any type of jobless benefits at all.