Schettino v. Administrator, Unemployment Compensation Act

• Decision Date: 14 August 1951
• Citation: 83 A.2d 217,138 Conn. 253
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: SCHETTINO v. ADMINISTRATOR, UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION ACT, et al. Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut

Page 217

83 A.2d 217

138 Conn. 253

SCHETTINO v. ADMINISTRATOR, UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION ACT, et al.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

Aug. 14, 1951.

John I. Ely, New Haven, with whom was Harrison F. Turnbull, New Haven, for the appellant (defendant American Steel & Wire Co.).

Daniel Baker, New Haven, for the appellee (plaintiff).

Harry Silverstone, Asst. Atty. Gen., with whom, on the brief, was George C. Conway, Atty. Gen., for the defendant administrator.

Before BROWN, C. J., and JENNINGS, BALDWIN, INGLIS and O'SULLIVAN, JJ.

BALDWIN,

Judge.

This is an appeal by an employer from the judgment of the Superior Court sustaining an award of the unemployment commissioner in favor of the plaintiff. He was an employee at the New Haven plant of the American Steel and Wire Company, hereinafter called the company, and was a member of the union which as the bargaining agent had negotiated a contract with the company. This contract provided that eligible employees would be entitled to a vacation with pay each year. Employees in the service of the company from one to five years were to receive one week, those in service from five to twenty-five years, two weeks, and those in service twenty-five years or longer, three weeks. The employee could specify the vacation period he desired, or the plant management and grievance committee could agree upon such a period, but the company retained the final right to schedule the vacation period between May 1 and October 1 in each year and to allot the vacation time or change the allotments made as it might see fit. The contract stipulated that the employer 'retains the exclusive rights to manage the business and plants and to direct the working forces,' including 'the right to relieve employees from duty because of lack of work or for other legitimate reasons.' It further stated that 'a period of temporary shutdown in any department for any reason between June 1 and October 1, unless other periods are mutually agreed upon, may be designated as comprising the vacation period for any employees of the department who are eligible for vacations.' No vacation period was agreed upon and on April 28, 1949, the company posted a notice to its employees that the plant would close for a two-week vacation period between 7 a. m. on July 30 and 7 a. m. on August 15. This notice indicated that construction work was to be performed during the shutdown period and stated that those employees who were required to work during the two weeks would be notified by their supervisor. The plaintiff, who was eligible for only one week of vacation, received a full week's pay for the first week of the shutdown. He was mentally and physically able to work during the second week, registered for work with the employment service and duly filed a claim for unemployment benefits for that week. He returned to work for the company when the plant reopened on August 15.

The company attacks the conclusions that the plaintiff had fulfilled the eligibility requirements and was not subject to any disqualification under the unemployment compensation law. General Statutes, § 7501, provides: 'An individual shall be deemed to be totally unemployed throughout a week if he has performed during that week no services for which remuneration of any nature is payable * * *.' The company argues that, although the plaintiff may have been technically 'unemployed' within this provision, his unemployment resulted from the voluntary agreement of the union as his agent and, that, furthermore, he was not 'available for work' during the vacation period. The provisions of the statutes pertinent to the discussion of these claims are §§ 7507 and 7508. Section 7507 requires that the employee be '(2) * * * available for work, provided no person shall be termed available for work unless he has been and is making reasonable efforts to obtain work' and that '(4) he has been totally or partially unemployed * * * during his current benefit year for one week * * * with respect to which he has received no benefits but during which he was eligible for benefits in all other respects and was not ineligible for benefits under any provision of section 7508.' Section 7508 disqualifies an employee '(2) during the week in which, in the opinion of the administrator, he has (a) left work without sufficient cause connected with his employment.'

If the plaintiff had been eligible for a two-week vacation with pay he would not have been entitled to unemployment benefits for any part of the two-week shutdown period. Kelly v. Administrator, Unemployment Compensation Act, 136 Conn. 482, 485, 72 A.2d 54. He was eligible, however, for only a one-week vacation with pay. The action of the company in declaring a two-week period did not have the effect of extending the plaintiff's vacation period. He was on vacation during the first week and unemployed during the second. 'The purpose of the act is to provide some income for the worker earning nothing because he is out of work through no fault or act of his own * * *.' Kelly v. Administrator, Unemployment Compensation Act, supra, 136 Conn. 487, 72 A.2d 56; Waterbury Savings Bank v. Danaher, 128 Conn. 78, 82, 20 A.2d 455. The company admits that the second week of vacation, without pay, was a period of technical unemployment for this plaintiff. It argues, however, that it was a period of voluntary and self-imposed unemployment because the union had made a contract, as the agent for the plaintiff, which gave the company the right to determine the vacation period and to grant certain specific vacation privileges. It points to the authority of Jackson v. Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Co., Minn., 47 N.W.2d 449, 451. This case appears to have been decided upon the authority of cases arising under the Washington, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Massachusetts statutes. ¹ These statutes, in terms, disqualify plaintiffs who 'voluntarily' leave their employment. ² The difference in the wording of these statutes from that of our own, § 7508(2)(a), necessarily affects the reasoning in those opinions. The test of 'voluntarily' leaving therein discussed and applied is not the test applied in this state.

Our rule is that 'one is not debarred from compensation because he has voluntarily left his employment unless the administrator shall be of the opinion that it was 'without sufficient cause connected with his employment'; and even if the administrator does so find or if he has been discharged for willful misconduct in the course of his employment he is denied compensation only for the week in which he left his employment and the four following weeks. [Rev. 1949, § 7508(2).]' Wyka v. Colt's Patent Fire Arms Mfg. Co., 129 Conn. 71, 73, 26 A.2d 465, 466. That the plaintiff's unemployment was in fact voluntary and self-imposed does not have support in the facts, and the commissioner did not so find. The essence of the agreement entered into between the union acting as the agent of the plaintiff and the company was, so far as it affected the plaintiff, nothing more than that he should have one week's vacation with pay and that the company should have the right to designate as that week one of the weeks during which it might be shut down for other purposes. It did not amount to a voluntary relinquishment by him of his employment during the second and subsequent weeks of shutdown. The company did not permit its employees, or the union grievance committee acting with the plant management committee, to have any part in designating the time when the vacation was to be taken or the length of the vacation period, as might have been done under the agreement. The company exercised its privilege of designating a period of shutdown as including the vacation period. To say that this action of the company was, in effect, the voluntary act of the plaintiff because the contract which his union made with the company empowered the company to take that action gives a very strained interpretation to the agreement. It might as well be argued that his agreement for one week's vacation with pay and for a shutdown meant that the company could stretch the vacation period out to any number of weeks it might choose without further compensation to him. It is far more logical to conclude, as the trial court did, that any period of shutdown beyond the one-week vacation for which he was eligible entitled him to unemployment benefits.

The rule laid down in American Bridge Co. v. Review Board, Ind.App., 98 N.E.2d 193, 195, will achieve a more equitable result under the circumstances of this case. The court said: 'One of the express purposes of the Indiana Employment Security Act is to provide for employees who are unemployed through no fault of their own. There is nothing within the provisions of the union contract which would give rise, even inferentially, to a reasonable construction that employees who were not eligible for vacations were affected in any way by the designation of the vacation period for eligible employees. Certainly, the employees who were not eligible for vacation have not by any reasonable interpretation to be placed upon the terms of * * * the bargaining agreement consented to any action by the company which would permit the designation of a period of vacation without pay for them. The agreement specifically says that such period of shutdown may be designated as comprising the vacation period for the employees of the department who are eligible for vacation.' The contract in the case at bar contained an almost identical provision.

It is significant that the rule laid down in the Massachusetts case of Moen v. Director of Division of Employment Security, 324 Mass. 246, 85 N.E.2d 779, 8 A.L.R.2d 429, was nullified by statute in 1949. Mass.Ann.Laws c. 151A, § 1(r)(2) (last sentence). The rule in Re Buffelen Lumber & Mfg. Co., 32 Wash.2d 205, ...