Up against a deadline to move bills to the House of Delegates, senators changed a proposal to alter West Virginia’s unemployment safety net.
Senator Eric Nelson, who explained the latest version, said changes are necessary to assure stability of the state’s unemployment trust fund, to ease financial pressure on employers and to assure unemployment will remain available to laid off workers.
“It will restore stability to our unemployment system,” said Nelson, R-Kanawha.
Senator Mike Caputo, D-Marion, countered that the changes are too significant to pass right up against a legislative deadline.
“I think we need to slow this train down a little bit,” Caputo said. “This is very important. It is very, very, very important and we can’t get this wrong.”
Senators voted 24-7 in favor of the latest version’s passage. The bill now goes to the House of Delegates.
Senators first introduced proposed changes to unemployment benefits during a Finance Committee meeting on Saturday.
That initial version would have made a range of changes, most significantly using West Virginia’s seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate to determine the maximum number of weeks of benefit eligibility. So, for example, if the average unemployment rate were below 5.5 percent, the maximum duration of benefits would be 12 weeks.
The maximum number of weeks of unemployment in current West Virginia law is 26.
That earlier bill would have lowered the maximum weekly benefit rate from its current 66 and two thirds of average weekly wages down to 55 percent.
The version introduced on Wednesday evening has a different structure.
The bill would allow a maximum 24 weeks of unemployment eligibility. It no longer pegs the number of weeks of eligibility to the unemployment rate.
Instead, the bill would lower the amount of the benefit over time.
The new proposal would start at 70% of average weekly wages — higher than the current rate — over the first four week period of unemployment.
From there, the benefit would gradually go lower. So for the second four-week period, the benefit rate would be 65% of the worker’s weekly wage.
That would continue through the sixth four-week period when the benefit rate would be 45%.
The first version of the Senate unemployment bill received criticism for being introduced up against the backdrop of hundreds of job losses at Cleveland-Cliffs in Weirton and Allegheny Wood Products at locations around the state.
Senators noted that this version would not take effect until Jan. 1, 2025.