Newsletter
UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS AFTER NON-VOLUNTARY TER-MINATION
A recent interpretation by the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) addresses doubts over the deter-mination of "non-voluntary termination of em-ployment" for the purposes of unemployment benefit payments under the Employment Insur-ance Act.
If employees of a business entity that down-sizes its workforce are compulsorily required to leave its employment without being given the option to continue in employment, or are allowed to continue in employment only under less favorable terms and conditions, then for the purposes of payment of unemployment benefits, their employment is to be considered to have been terminated non-voluntarily. But this does not apply to employees who are given the choice to continue in employment but opt voluntarily to leave employment under an incentives retirement or termination pack-age.
If a business entity issues retainment notices pursuant to the Corporate Mergers and Ac-quisitions Act offering employment, although employees who do not consent to continue in employment have been given the choice to continue, their reason for leaving employment nonetheless falls within the category of "change of employer or change or down-grading of employment conditions", and their termination is therefore to be classed as non-voluntary termination of employment.