INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -
Advocates for starting a statewide program allowing workers to receive
partial unemployment benefits say they will make a new push for legislative
approval of the work-share proposal.
Such work-sharing
programs are already in place in nearly 30 other states, where businesses
reach agreements with the state to reduce their employees’ hours as an
alternative to laying them off. Those workers could then receive
unemployment compensation for their lost wages.
Similar proposals
failed to advance during Indiana’s past two legislative sessions, but
Republican Rep. David Ober of Albion said he’ll sponsor a bill during the
upcoming 2016 session that would create an Indiana work-share program.
“You can hold on to
your best workers during an economic slowdown when productivity may not be
100 percent,” Ober told the Indianapolis Business Journal. “These people
keep their benefits and keep a percentage of their wage while they’re on the
program. Folks are able to continue to put food on the table.”
Both the Indiana
Chamber of Commerce and state AFL-CIO support the concept, but Gov. Mike
Pence’s administration has previously opposed it. Pence spokeswoman Kara
Brooks wouldn’t say whether the governor would support it during the 2016
session, which starts in early January.
“In the past, we
have had concerns about the potential for fraud and the costs of
implementing such a program, and had not received sufficient information to
allow us to feel comfortable with previous proposals,” she said.
Mike Ripley, a vice
president at the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, said he believed that some
lawmakers’ ideological concerns about a work-share program being an
expansion of government has slowed support in the past.
“While it’s a new
program, it’s less government, because we’re not having people totally laid
off and eligible for full-time unemployment,” Ripley said. “It keeps money
in the economy, and people get to keep their jobs.”
Indiana AFL-CIO
spokesman Jeff Harris said the union has been supportive of the program in
the past and likely will be again as long as the bill doesn’t include
provisions such as steps that could void a collective-bargaining agreement.
In 2012, the
federal government offered states about $100 million in grant funding to
adopt such programs.
Indiana’s
unemployment rate of 4.4 percent for October was far lower than the nearly
11 percent it reached in early 2010.
Democratic Rep.
Karlee Macer of Indianapolis, who has been working with Ober on the bill,
said she believes now is the perfect time to act.
“We hope this would
never be needed,” Macer said. “We want our state to be successful. It’s the
first thing we can do on the road to recovery to prevent job loss.”