Unemployment Articles and Guides

Fired For Stealing? An Accusation Isn't Proof - And Neither Is a Firing If you were fired for stealing, the accusation alone doesn't decide your unemployment claim. States look at what the employer can actually prove. I remember a case like this from my years in the system: a warehouse employee was fired for "theft" after a supervisor found a company-owned tool in his truck at the end of a shift. No camera footage, no admission, no inventory record showing it missing before t

A Positive Test Doesn't Always Mean You're Disqualified Early in my career, I watched a colleague make a determination that stuck with me. A claimant had tested positive for illegal drugs and was let go as a result, and my colleague disqualified him for misconduct on that basis alone. There was one problem: the employer had no drug policy. No rule against drug use, nothing the claimant had ever agreed to or been warned about. The claimant's job also wasn't a safety-sensitive

Not every policy violation disqualifies you. Here's what states look at before they decide. You broke a rule at work — maybe a dress-code violation, using your phone on the production floor when it wasn’t allowed, or not following a required safety procedure like wearing required protective equipment. Now you’ve got a termination letter that says “violation of company policy,” and you’re wondering whether that phrase just cost you your unemployment benefits too. Here’s the sh