Members of the Maine House didn't have to look far to find workers who have struggled under the state's unemployment benefit policies. In fact, some of those people were sitting right beside them.
"When I got laid off from my employment, I had 38-and-a-half years, I had a different circumstance than we're talking about today because we went through a federal bankruptcy. When I left, I got nothing -- nothing, men and women, not one penny," said state Rep. Herbert Clark, a Millinocket Democrat, who was among those House members involved in a 70-minute debate on a bill that would change the state's existing unemployment benefits law for workers with accrued vacation time who suddenly find themselves out of a job.
Current law requires workers in those situations to wait until the accrued time is exhausted before they can apply for unemployment benefits. In the state's paper mills, where veteran workers like Clark build up considerable vacation time, the laid-off employees might have to wait a month before they can apply for benefits.
Clark pointed to recent concessions by mill workers at the Fraser Paper Co. in Madawaska to emphasize the apparent double standard that those opposed to the vacation pay bill exhibited when it came to management bonuses.
"You've been reading a lot about Fraser Paper Company when they gave their chief executive officer bonus after bonus and the workers on the floor, to keep their jobs, gave up benefits, gave up vacations, gave up pay, gave up you-name-it and they gave it to keep their jobs," he said. "But I don't see nobody down here arguing about what happened to the big bonuses that were given out. But yet, let one worker ask for something and we know where you're coming from."
State Rep. Steven Butterfield, a Bangor Democrat, says that in lay-off situations, current unemployment benefit laws seem to reward workers who take their vacations at the expense of those who do not. "This essentially punishes people for being productive, for staying at work, for not taking vacation time, or even worse, you might have had a vacation plan, you could have said, you know, 'I'm taking the family to wherever you're going in a couple of months,' and then you lose your job and now you're on the hook."
"Please remember that this money is money that the employee has already earned," said state Rep. Anna Blodgett, an Augusta Democrat who reminded those opposed to the bill that the wait to apply for unemployment benefits only worsens the conditions for displaced workers. "Let's all know that unemployment lasts a lot longer than it used to," she said. "And I think we need to be sensitive to the fact that when somebody is laid off, they're certainly not going to make the money they did when they were working, they're going to be paid much, much less."
"I just want to remind everybody here that this does come with a price tag," said state Rep. James Hamper, an Oxford Republican, who said businesses would have to shoulder the costs of the vacation pay bill in the form of increased unemeployment insurance costs."That price tag to businesses is about another one percent increase in their U-I rates and it does come with a price tag to the state -- you look at the fiscal note at around $35,000."
David Clough is the state director for the National Federation of Independent Businesses. He says the bill's additional costs to businesses could result in more job losses. "Is it fair to employers to be jacking up the cost of unemployment compensation, which employers pay exclusively, at a time when we have 58,000 people unemployed and it's not clear how many years it will take us to create the jobs necessary to put those people back to work?" he asked.
The vacation pay bill passed 81-53 in the House with about 70 percent of the opposition coming from Republican members. The measure faces additional votes in the House and Senate.