Unemployment Insurance

General Motors Corp. wants Maryland to halt payments of unemployment benefits to about 3,000 union workers at its Southeast Baltimore van assembly plant who were laid off last month as a result of strikes at two GM parts plants in Flint, Mich.The local development comes as GM is indicating that it may drop some low-profit cars if United Auto Workers' strikes continue into August.The No. 1 automaker had asked the state Office of Unemployment Insurance to either reconsider its June 12 decision to pay the benefits to the laid-off workers at the Broening Highway plant or it will appeal to the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board.

// Obama for president //   Four years ago, President Barack Obama took office as the economy was in steep decline with millions in the process of losing their jobs, the nation was locked in seemingly endless military conflicts, Wall Street firms were getting bailed out but not held accountable and a growing number of Americans were unable to afford health insurance. Today, the economy is growing, albeit modestly, the U.S. military has largely withdrawn from Iraq and will do so in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden is dead, the federal government has begun more closely regulating the kind of large banks and finance companies that contributed to the mortgage crisis and health care reform is gradually making sure working Americans can get affordable insurance for themselves and their families -- including those with pre-existing conditions.

Gov. Martin O'Malley went into this General Assembly session with a proposal to secure nearly $127 million in federal funds that would allow the state to lower the unemployment insurance taxes of Maryland's businesses. The response from the business community? Fierce opposition. Business leaders worried that delaying the increases would destabilize the unemployment insurance fund and lead to a bigger bite later, and they complained about the strings attached to the federal funds. But that changed yesterday with the agreement of the Maryland Chamber of Commerce and the Maryland Retailers Association to back an amended version of the bill.

A Baltimore woman pleaded guilty Tuesday in connection with a scheme to steal more than $400,000 in Maryland unemployment benefits, the Maryland U.S. attorney's office said. Shekia Denise Edwards, 25, was one of three charged in the incident. Co-conspirators Kevin Bernard Smith and Sheila Denis Willis, also of Baltimore, had earlier pleaded guilty. According to their plea agreements, the women filed false unemployment insurance claims using Social Security numbers and other information belonging to Marylanders unconnected with the scheme.

Many Maryland employers will see the tax they pay for unemployment insurance drop by more than half next year. The tax cut, which will be announced Monday by the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, reflects the improving employment situation in the state and should give businesses a boost as they use that money for other purposes. The unemployment insurance tax soared several years ago as the ranks of the unemployed spiked during the recession, which in turn depleted the state's trust fund for jobless benefits.

UNEMPLOYMENT compensation is fast becoming a mere relic of what was once a comprehensive system of social insurance. Recently, the Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, using Labor Department figures, reported that an all-time record number of jobless people -- 334,000 -- exhausted their unemployment benefits this July.In every previous postwar recession, Congress added temporary, emergency programs to extend benefits beyond the standard 26 RobertKuttnerweeks. This time, the Democratic Congress belatedly moved in early August to extend benefits up to an additional 20 weeks in states with high rates of unemployment.

Imagine my surprise this morning when I saw letters from apparently well-fed individuals complaining about paying unemployment insurance. For all those beleaguered employers who don't want to pay unemployment benefits I've got a solution: Hire illegal immigrants. They are non-persons, so an employer does not have to pay unemployment insurance and really shouldn't bother about niceties like Workers' Compensation, minimum wage laws, child labor laws, unions, OSHA or any other oppressive, socialistic safety net provisions.

The owner of the Sparrows Point steel mill has told state unemployment insurance officials that about 720 workers at the Baltimore County plant are being furloughed and are expected back on the job March 4. Managers started telling workers last Thursday not to show up for work this week in what was described then as an "indefinite" layoff, plant employees told The Baltimore Sun. The plant's owner, RG Steel, did not give Maryland officials notice...

M aryland business groups have been up in arms in recent months about automatic increases in unemployment insurance payments that are about to kick in - costing them $136-$383 extra per worker. It's a tough thing to take in the middle of a recession, but it is necessary to keep the fund solvent in the face of so many layoffs. Now Gov. Martin O'Malley has unveiled a plan that would shave $83 million off the tax increase companies will have to pay, allow them to pay over a longer period of time and reduce the interest rate for late payments from 1.5 percent to 1 percent.

SOUTH BOSTON, Va. - For 13 years, Amy Altman worked at the JPS Apparel Fabrics plant here, and wound up earning $9.50 an hour. With production grinding toward a halt early last year, she began working one week on and one off, and on the off weeks she collected a $224 unemployment check. When the plant closed on Aug. 1, letting 346 workers go, the checks continued. But in October, they stopped. Her eligibility, limited to six months, had expired. Creditors phoned. "When would I pay?" she recalls them asking.

Many Maryland employers will see the tax they pay for unemployment insurance drop by more than half next year. The tax cut, which will be announced Monday by the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, reflects the improving employment situation in the state and should give businesses a boost as they use that money for other purposes. The unemployment insurance tax soared several years ago as the ranks of the unemployed spiked during the recession, which in turn depleted the state's trust fund for jobless benefits.

  State officials estimate that the Marylanders could lose $2.5 billion in income if President Obama and the Congress fail to reach a spending and revenue agreement before automatic cuts to defense and other programs take effect in January. The budget process known as "sequestration" could cost the state $150 million in federal grants to state and local government in this year alone, the Department of Budget and Management said in a report. The cuts could still be averted if the lame-duck Congress and the administration can negotiate an accord after the Nov. 6 election, but no talks are expected before then.  The sequestration cuts was negotiated by Obama and House Republicans as a way to resolve last year's standoff on the federal debt ceiling.

The poverty rate in Baltimore held steady last year with about 1 in 4 counted as impoverished by the U.S. Census Bureau - a situation that economists say reflects the fits and starts of the nation's economic recovery. After a jump of more than 4 percent in the city's poverty rate between 2009 and 2010, the rate held steady in 2011, according to data released Thursday. That stagnation reflects the national trend. In the past two years, 15 percent of the U.S. population was living in poverty, up from 12.5 percent in 2007, the year the Great Recession began, according to census estimates.

Federal employees will be required to contribute $15 billion toward the cost of extending federal unemployment insurance under a tentative agreement struck in Congress that would also maintain the 2010 payroll tax break, federal worker union officials said Wednesday. The deal, which lawmakers have cautioned is still tentative, would require employees to contribute an additional eight tenths of one percent to their retirement funds. The money generated from that provision would cover roughly half of the $30 billion cost of extending long-term unemployment benefits.

Imagine my surprise this morning when I saw letters from apparently well-fed individuals complaining about paying unemployment insurance. For all those beleaguered employers who don't want to pay unemployment benefits I've got a solution: Hire illegal immigrants. They are non-persons, so an employer does not have to pay unemployment insurance and really shouldn't bother about niceties like Workers' Compensation, minimum wage laws, child labor laws, unions, OSHA or any other oppressive, socialistic safety net provisions.

The owner of the Sparrows Point steel mill has told state unemployment insurance officials that about 720 workers at the Baltimore County plant are being furloughed and are expected back on the job March 4. Managers started telling workers last Thursday not to show up for work this week in what was described then as an "indefinite" layoff, plant employees told The Baltimore Sun. The plant's owner, RG Steel, did not give Maryland officials notice...

Opponents of continuing the extension of unemployment insurance often make one of the following arguments: (1) the program is welfare for the undeserving; (2) it subsidizes leisure and is a major contributor to the high unemployment rate; or (3) the extension does little to create jobs. The critics have it wrong on all counts. The mischaracterization of unemployment insurance as welfare is a fundamental misunderstanding of the program — and insurance in general. Welfare is society's means of ensuring that the poorest among us have their basic needs taken care of, regardless of prior contributions to the system.

Jeremy Schwarz's op-ed piece contrasting unemployment insurance and welfare makes several points that don't bear up under scrutiny ("Unemployment benefits are not like welfare," Dec. 21). He's correct that people pay insurance to protect themselves in case of an adverse event; however, workers do not pay for unemployment insurance. Unlike Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, to which both employers and employees contribute, unemployment insurance is paid entirely by the employer.

Opponents of continuing the extension of unemployment insurance often make one of the following arguments: (1) the program is welfare for the undeserving; (2) it subsidizes leisure and is a major contributor to the high unemployment rate; or (3) the extension does little to create jobs. The critics have it wrong on all counts. The mischaracterization of unemployment insurance as welfare is a fundamental misunderstanding of the program — and insurance in general. Welfare is society's means of ensuring that the poorest among us have their basic needs taken care of, regardless of prior contributions to the system.