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Show Utah Foundation Compensation laws deprive wage earners of incentive Because of the peculiarities of school employment, it is anticipated that there may be some problems in administering ad-ministering these new provisions. It is also expected ex-pected that this extension of coverage will increase the cost of state and local government in Utah. Present unemployment compensation laws do not provide direct incentives for employees and employers to control unemployment benefit costs. This observation ob-servation was made by Utah Foundation, the private research ofganization in a studv of Utah's unem- below that of the nation as a whole. Nevertheless, the report indicates several problems connected with the program: 1. Utah's law of allowing persons who voluntarily leave work without good cause or refuse suitable employment to receive unemployment benefits after only a short postponement post-ponement is considerably more lenient than that of most other states. 2. Although Utah provides for a comprehensive initial interview and periodic interviews in-terviews for the long-term unemployed, there is no weekly follow-up to determine deter-mine if claimants are actually ac-tually conducting a diligent independent job search to obtain new employment while they are receiving unemployment benefits. The report suggests that the weekly claim certificate might be revised to list the specinc enoris mat were made during the preceeding week to secure new employment. em-ployment. 3. Beginning January 1, 1978, unemployment coverage will extend to nearly all employees of state and local government, including in-cluding school districts. ployment compensation program. The study points out that unemployment benefits are not subject to Federal and state taxes. As a result, some individuals---especially secondary wage earners in a family can obtain nearly as much from unemployment benefits as they would receive in take-home take-home pay from gainful employment. Thus, there often is little incentive for a secondary wage earner to seek new employment once he of she has qualified for unemployment benefits. In addition, Utah is one of the few states that does not use some type of chargeback charge-back system to finance its unemployment benefit program. Although the Utah program is far simpler to administer than a system where unemployment benefit costs are charged back to former employers, em-ployers, it lessens employer interest in reporting fraudulent claims and -or abuses in the program. Because the Utah program does not provide direct incentives for employees em-ployees and employers to control unemployment benefit costs, the Foundation report notes that Utah's Employment Security Department has had to take some special steps to limit payments to eligible claimants. Utah expands a larger proportion of its administrative budget on benefit control and fraud prevention that is the case nationally. According to the study, the ability of states to crack down on fraudulent claims was severely hampered in 1975 when the U.S. Department Depart-ment of Health, Education, and Welfare stopped the practice of allowing states to cross check unemployment benefit claims against Social Security reports filed by employers. While it is not now known how much abuse--or outright fraud exists in the unemployment insurance in-surance program, national estimates have placed the number of illegitimate claims somewhere between one percent and five percent of the total case load. Foundation analysts indicate in-dicate that Utah generally has enjoyed excellent administration ad-ministration of its unemployment unem-ployment compensation program and Utah's benefit-cost benefit-cost ratio usually has been |