 In Act 91, the first section, Section 29, was a housekeeping piece for the Department of Labor to allow for electronic business registration. It didn't relate to COVID-19 directly. Section 30 was the first really important piece there, and what this allowed was two things. It protected employers' experience ratings, and then as a result of that, their unemployment insurance tax rates from being adversely impacted by employees who voluntarily quit their jobs for a COVID-19 related reason. So, because they had an underlying health condition and the workplace wasn't safe, because they had to quarantine, take care of a loved one, something like that. The next thing it did is for employers who had to shut down their operations either because they had a COVID-19 outbreak or due to public health order from the governor. It protected them from an adverse impact on their experience ratings for that. There were two caveats with that, though, which we may want to revisit, and I think you'll want to talk to the Commissioner of Labor about today. The first was that it was only for eight weeks of experience rating relief, and then any additional time beyond that was left up to the Commissioner's discretion. The second point was that they were required to rehire the employees afterwards. And this may be problematic in some instances, because businesses have been so drastically impacted they may not be able to rehire everyone that they laid off. And in addition, individuals may have switched jobs during the time that they were laid off so they may not be able to recapture all of those employees so that language may need to be adjusted now. I think in my conversations with the Commissioner, I think they're going to propose those two changes, but we'll find out earlier. Yeah, I think that's, that's my early impression as well, but I think that's better for them to talk about. In 1931, authorized individuals to quit their jobs for certain COVID-19 related reasons and still be eligible to receive unemployment insurance benefits. So this, these are reasons such as needing to care for a loved one who's sick, needing to quarantine, because the school or daycare where your children are has closed due to COVID-19. So you need to stay home and take care of your children. And so this basically allowed those individuals to be eligible to receive unemployment insurance benefits if they had an eligible reason to quit. You go through those reasons. I know there was one sentence that had a laundry list of reasons. Yeah, let me pull up. This is the act 91 here. All right. So the here are the reasons the So they are self isolating. They're caring for assisting a family member who self isolating or quarantine, quarantining because they've been diagnosed with COVID-19. They're experiencing symptoms of COVID-19. They've been exposed to COVID-19. Or they're in a specific class or group of persons who have been identified as being at risk of exposed to or infected with COVID-19. All of those same reasons apply if it's the individual employee themselves and not their family member so they've been exposed to COVID-19 or they're at high risk or they're sick with it. And then the other piece here is like I said, to care for assist a family member who's left in employment because of an unreasonable risk that they could be exposed to or become infected with COVID-19 at their place of employment. So, for example, if you have a family member with a respiratory issue and their doctor has recommended that they isolate at home. Particularly if they are at high risk and unable to go out, you may have left employment to take care of them or assist them. And then there is left employment to care for a child under 18 because the school or childcare has been closed. Or the childcare provider is unavailable due to a public health emergency related to COVID-19. So for children and, for example, a home daycare, the home daycare closes down because either the daycare provider or a family member of that provider is diagnosed with COVID-19 or required to quarantine. And again, these all apply to the individual as well here. So here's the laundry list for the individual, which is the same list as we went through below. So a couple of things for Senator Rahm's benefit, I should probably know this, but the number of people that are qualifying for unemployment in a certain business impacts your experience rating. And so the charge to the business goes up if they've laid off workers and unemployment insurance has been paid to those workers. And that's the first section relieves those people of those charges. There's things that we generally we call socializing the costs that get spread across all employers as opposed to that individual like we have laws on domestic violence if you have to leave for a reason like that that costs that that that charge wouldn't be on the employer. So, I guess I'm curious, I don't know if you can talk to this or this is, this is something we definitely want to hear from the commissioner about those reasons that you put forward there could be temporary in nature. What is the responsibility after two or three weeks for the employee to go back or I know there was something you said about the lack of charge ability would be for eight weeks in the discretion of the commissioner. It could be extended longer and I'm assuming that he's extended that longer in a lot of cases. But what if you the quarantine one for instance so you quarantine for 14 days after 14 days or you're required to go back or what's going on in the real world there do you know. So, the, the issue here with these is these are instances where you might need to quit your job. In order to do that because you don't have leave available. There is a federal leave law that was put into place temporarily. It's difficult to take time off up to two weeks for things like quarantine or to care for a loved one. And so that that leave law was put in place and then you get up to 12 weeks for child care. That's the total when you you use that law, the eight weeks of relief. Just to clarify and I wasn't clear about this before was that this applied to the employer shutdown reasons so the employer could shut down or temporarily lay off its staff for up to eight weeks. In order to make sure that the employer shall be relieved of benefits. So it's the way the law reads is an employer shall be relieved of charges for benefits paid to an individual for a period of up to eight weeks. If the employer temporarily ceased operations in response to public health authority request. Or a state of emergency declared by the governor. That's for a temporary shutdown for an individual worker who has is at high risk or taking care of a child that rate relief continues indefinitely even without the commissioners. That's correct. That's correct. The important thing here is the restrictions on unemployment insurance. If you're able to return to work. So you're able and available to return to work. And there is a reasonable offer of employment. So your employer says, okay, you had to be out for six weeks. You weren't eligible for leave and I apologize I forget the limitations on the leave eligibility. But I can pull that up for our second half today. But if you're, if you're, you've collected unemployment for six weeks but now you're able and available to return to work. And the positions available you, you cannot stay on unemployment insurance indefinitely. So this is kind of the push and pull that we were dealing with. In September, where the initial emergency had passed and folks with an underlying health condition might not be able and available to return to work because of a good cause health reason. But other individuals who were on unemployment and now that the positions had become available again were able to return if they didn't have an underlying health condition or other reason. Other covert 19 related reason to stay home. And so that that was something we discussed a little bit in September. And the commissioner can talk a little bit about what their experience has been with that. But that's something that the federal department has been continuing to emphasize is that If, if people don't have an underlying covert 19 related reason. That allows the commissioner to waive the able and available requirement. They need to be able and available for work. And if they receive a reasonable offer of employment and reject it. And there's no covert 19 related reason for them to reject it and no other good cause reason for them to reject it. So that that would be something like they're being hired to temporarily replace union workers who are out on strike or something like that. Then they're, then they, they lose their unemployment insurance at that point. Talk to us a little bit about the work search. Require which my understanding is that's a procedure or policy put in place by the department of labor we didn't change that in law that they had some discretion as to not requiring the work search during this period. So what I'm trying to get at is like a classic person who goes out on unemployment and forget about the, the special leave program that the feds have set up but they go out on unemployment because they suspect they've been in contact or or have or have to quarantine for one reason or another. So I successfully complete the quarantine. I assume there are many, many individuals out there who started to get unemployment because of that and are still receiving unemployment even though the quarantine period is long since past. And that is because there's no work search requirement and their former employer hasn't offered or nobody has come to their door knocking and offering them a job so they're perfectly legitimate to continue to receive benefits. Assuming that there is no work search requirement and the commissioners really better to talk to the issue of the work search requirement. I think the requirement for work search has been reinstated in certain cases and then I don't know if it was waved again now that the virus is worsening. But I think in the fall in some cases it was being reinstated. Because the jobs were available. As the economy was recovering and now that we're seeing the virus spike again I don't know what the current status of that is so the commissioner can speak to that but assuming there's no work search requirement and assuming there hasn't been a reasonable offer of employment made that an individual could continue to collect unemployment insurance. And similarly, if you are carrying out a work search, but you're not finding a job, and you're not getting a reasonable offer of employment, you can stay on unemployment, as long as you have benefits so. But I see the commissioners just joined us here so he may be able to answer whether what the status of the work search requirement is. Well, let's commissioner. Thank you for joining us. We're going to continue with Damien and our schedule as you know is to go to 925, and then we'll break for the floor will have you back. I imagine the floor action is going to be incredibly short. So stand by, but instead of, yeah, instead of getting into your testimony right now let's continue with with with Damien. Okay, let's, it's a little confusing we'll clarify that with the commissioner, but I assume there are thousands of people who are in this category who triggered their unemployment early on with in the virus and either are still drawing under the first 39 weeks and then the 11 week extension and just trying to get a classic example of who those people are at this point and whether we need to cut them off or protect them, we just need to find out the direction in terms of extending this sunset. In this return I think you had one more bullet up there. I don't know that it was substantive but yep. Let me just share my screen again. And all right. So, the, the next. The next two pieces here section 32 and 33. Just essentially revert us to the pre coven 19. On March 31. So that's, that's an important date for the committee here. If you're going to extend that, then you, that's the we need to do that before March 31. And then section 34 just requires an employer to notify an individual of the availability of unemployment benefits. And I believe that was another housekeeping piece to address some of the federal coven 19 requirements. So the, the March 31 state forgive me I thought it was March 1, but the March 31 state, I would think leaves some leaves a gap. If we've extended benefits in a general sense for 11 weeks under the new COVID bill. Some of them were scheduled to end on December 31 or 26 or whatever. And so that's going to take us through the beginning of March. And these liberalized policies are all well and good to continue during the pandemic but if there's no, the federal program for people who otherwise wouldn't have be monetarily eligible for UI, if that's going to end, doesn't do us a lot of good. We have a gap, perhaps that we have to look at. And I assume the commissioner will talk about that. The federal extension is through March 14. But then there are some complicated or phase outs with PUA and so forth that I think the commissioner or Cameron can speak to better about how that will work functionally. I mean, it's very, I mean, it's already very detailed, but it's still very preliminary here. Does anybody case or anybody else have any questions at this point of Damien. We're going to be on this for a while so go ahead. I don't know if my questions are for Damien or the commissioner so I just thought I'd mention three questions I had and we can take them up after the floor so people have some time to think about them. One is I was actually curious about I think the first bullet point on electronic registration of businesses. I think this is like a very valuable opportunity which I think the Secretary of State's office is taking advantage of to collect more demographic and geographic information about who those businesses are. So I was wondering, you know, where that is and if that's part of a federal requirement around these programs. One is language access I think this is a question for the commissioner around the requirements for language access and their protocols right now around people who don't speak English who call their office, and three is general demographic information who's taking care who's dropping out of the workforce because of childcare reasons, you know who's getting sick at work. I would imagine that's a federal requirement to have that demographic information I hope we can explore it as we explore our policy around this so those are my three questions. Yeah. Anybody else and Damien, if you want to add anything will, if not we'll move on to the workers comp issue in the remaining 10 minutes we have. Okay. Okay. Walk us through what we did last year on the presumption. And I think I got the date right on that one is January 15 right when it sunsets. Correct. So this is a little bit more pressing. So, let me just pull this up. Okay, so. Well, may I ask Nathan a favor I know Nathan, we're brand new here but often we post by day so each we list the day and then all documents and witnesses are listed. Anything they present to the committee that day. So, the summary Damien summary would be great to put up on the website under today's date under Damien's name. And I'll send you a witness when they have things that would be great so that we can look at them. If, you know, as we're working through this. Yeah, Nathan, I'll send you the file and links to the two bills. When we're yeah and this and just the summary the bullets and stuff that would be helpful. Yeah, I'll send that to him as well. I'm going to introduce Nathan to the committee I assume that several of you have spoken with him directly but I really enjoyed the first week I've had with Nathan, I think he's going to be great asset to our committee and we all reach out to him and have a one on one with him just chatting a little bit as we go forward this week. Okay Damien. Okay, so this is Act 150, which did two things. The first was here in section one it gave the, the Department of Labor administrative flexibility. I didn't realize the time I see. 26. Since the jump right in here will pick right up there at that point. When we come back and we'll hear about five or 10 minutes about that and then we'll move to the commissioner.