Program allows partial unemployment benefit
Missouri wants more employers to take advantage of an existing state program that allows workers whose hours have been cut to draw partial unemployment payments. The Shared Work Program aims to encourage employers to reduce hours rather than lay off workers.
Though the program has been around for more than 20 years, it still lacks wide participation from employers.
"This program allows employers to reduce their labor costs without having to lose their experienced work force," Larry Rebman, director of the Missouri Labor Department, said Thursday in a news release. "It is a win-win for employers, employees and the state."
Missouri started the program in 1987, but it was little known or used until employers began widespread layoffs and reducing hours during the current recession.
The state’s unemployment rate last month stood at 9.3 percent, down from 9.5 percent in September.
The program already has had an 87 percent increase in new participation this year alone, but it is still used by just 461 Missouri employers, according to Rebman. More than 37,000 workers, each working fewer than 40 hours a week, are enrolled in the state program and receiving partial unemployment benefits, he said.
The labor department director said 113 St. Louis-area companies were participating in the Shared Work Program. One local firm highlighted by Rebman was Sunnen Products Co. in Maplewood.
He said the program had allowed Sunnen employees to supplement their wages while helping the company reduce its labor costs.
Lee Holmes, the Sunnen human resources manager, said the company, which employs more 400 people, went to a 32-hour workweek early this year to cut costs.
Holmes said some of Sunnen’s workers might have left if the partial unemployment benefits hadn’t been available.
Sunnen, which makes precision bore-sizing systems, already had reduced its work force from a peak of nearly 600 workers a decade ago, Holmes said.
The Shared Work Program "has kept us from losing even more people," he said.
In fiscal year 2009, the state Division of Employment Security paid $12.4 million in Shared Work benefits. If the same employers who participated in the program had laid off all the employees getting those benefits, division officials estimated that those workers would have received $45.9 million in regular unemployment benefits.
Employers can get more information on the program by www.SharedWork.mo.gov.
Filed under: business by John