A new report from the left-leaning Century Foundation explores how conservatives in some states are turning to the unemployment system to reward workers who quit their jobs after refusing to obey vaccine mandates.
Although there is some variation in how the rules are applied, workers who quit their jobs typically are ineligible for unemployment benefits. In addition, refusal to comply with an employer’s reasonable requirement is tantamount to misconduct, which is a legitimate cause for firing, and workers fired for cause don’t usually qualify for benefits.
But as part of the Republican Party’s war on both private and public mandates — shaped in part by a suspicion of vaccines among many Republican voters — some GOP-led states are changing the rules to allow vaccine refusers to collect unemployment benefits. Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Kansas and Tennessee have all passed new laws along those lines, and Nebraska has done so through policy guidance. Another 15 states are considering such legislation.
Ironically, many of these states sought to cut off unemployment benefits early last summer, ending federal programs that provided enhanced and extended benefits during the pandemic. “These states withdrew support for individuals suffering unemployment directly because of COVID-19, but now suddenly want to provide UI benefits to those who were fired or had to quit because they voluntarily choose to increase the chance of infection for themselves and their coworkers,” the report says.
Writing in November about the situation, The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell savored the irony. “All spring and summer, Republicans cried bloody murder about how too-generous unemployment benefits were supposedly discouraging Americans from returning to work,” she wrote. “Expanded jobless benefits were creating welfare queens, they argued, and driving labor shortages and hurting small businesses.”
Now, some red states are happy to reward a refusal to work, as long as it’s in the name of vaccine resistance. The benefits of such rewards, however, are difficult to determine. “[T]he policies being enacted seem, at least at this point, about sending a political message rather than delivering additional benefits to large numbers of residents,” the Century Foundation report says. “Sadly, though, in endorsing vaccine refusal, these policies also undermine public health and work toward making the pandemic all that much more lethal.”
