child care reasons

by Connie

(Belleville Il Usa)

I have been working midnights for five years I have been trying to get off this shift for the last year it has become a nightmare to get child care for my 6 year old son. I have a 19 year old daughter who was watching him but she just went to the Navy & was recently deployed. I have tried to find a diffrent shift in my department & none have become available its a very small department. I have also applied for more than 50 positions with in the hospital & nothing. I dont know how much longer I will be avaiable to work this shift but I am a great employee & just dont want to get fired would rather leave on good terms. If I do quite & show where I have applied for other positions w company will I be able to get unemployment?…Please help…

Connie,

You need to address the need for a shift change with the employer and tell them your dilemma.

At least that’s what I would do.

And before you do that .. take the time and see if you can find a Illinois precedent decision which would support that quitting for your reason would be with good cause.

Illinois Unemployment Law Handbook

Comments for child care reasons

Mar 17, 2010

Good ?

by: Anonymous

Very good question I think a lot of woman face these issues. We have to put our children first. I think if you are a good employee & been working for more than a year they should pay. Please let us know

It is a very good question and even the “unemployment department” understands that working people’s responsibility for the care of their children is paramount.

But I hope that my answer to this woman explained that even the care of children as a reason for quitting requires that two little phrases in the statutes still need to be fulfilled … efforts to preserve the employment and attributable to the employment.

Just over half of the states have provisions which allow a woman in an “abusive personal relationship” to quit with good cause, but guess what .. even then she has to jump through hoops in order to prove the good cause existed according to a particular state’s case law.

I believe the result of legislating employer paid benefits for what amounts to a personal issue for women, would result in hiring discrimination against women in general .. it’s bad enough now.

It’s the system and how it is set up that hasn’t adjusted to how we’ve changed as a society since 1935.

Let me ask you this .. what if the government decided it was time for an overhaul on the UI system and was considering adding an unemployment payroll tax on employees for Personal Unemployment Tax Accounts .. would you be up in arms even if it afforded you the ability to leave a job at will without having to worry about twisting yourself in a pretzel to satisfy these two little phrases found in all state UI statutes?

Don’t get me wrong, I honestly believe that holding down a job forces workers to make some very hard decisions, but I also do not believe that all employer/employee conflicts of interests can be resolved without shifting the burden of who pays when the problem really isn’t the employers in the first place.

Would you be willing to have another tax deduction added to your paycheck to cover these types of situations?

Do you think there would be those who abuse the freedom to make a responsible choice?

In conclusion I do not believe employers should be required to pay for our personal problems, but I have no problem with them paying for not being adjustable to our “legitimate problems” especially when it comes to maintaining a job and being a responsible parent.

And if we keep up our end of the unemployment bargain and sustain the requirement to preserve the employment by seeking remedy from the employer .. we have effectively shifted the burden and the leaving of work becomes “attributable to the employer”.