not quitting voluntarily? Or vice versa?

by Sarah
(Portland OR)

I worked at a call center for about 10 months in Portland OR and I was taken into a conference room by an operations manager, and only him, and told that I had the option to either be fired (no reason stated for being fired but he said in the current economy they can do whatever they want) and recieve a horrible reference or I could quit and recieve a good reference. They had cut my hours from full time to about 8-15 hours a week, but still had me show up everyday only to be told I wasn't needed and sent home 70% of the time. I believe they were trying to get me to not show up in order to fire me, but their attempt failed so I was given the aforementioned ultimatum. I collected about $2000 worth of unemployment benefits and now a year later the unemployment department is trying to retroactively deny me my benefits because I said I was laid off, when in actuality I was forced to quit. What's the difference? Can they do this? It seems the government is making profit off of this if I have to pay back the money with interest and penalties, so they can't really be objective on this issue.



Ya, they can do this, because you lied on your unemployment application.