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Alternate base period for determining eligibility for unemployment compensation benefits

For the Connecticut Department of Labor (DOL) to administer a new unemployment compensation revision, employers may be required to provide payroll data regarding former employees outside the company’s regular quarterly reports.

     Expanded eligibility for unemployment compensation, which goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2003,

allows individuals that have not worked long enough to qualify for benefits under the current system to qualify using a different base period.

    The regular base period is the first four of the five most recently completed quarters prior to the quarter in which the claimant files a claim. When determining eligibility under the alternate base period, the DOL must look at the four most recently completed quarters prior to the quarter in which a claimant filed. But, if the claimant was:

  • receiving or eligible for workers' compensation; or
  • properly absent from work under his employer's sick or disability leave policy before becoming unemployed,

the alternate base period is the four most recent quarters in which he/she worked, as long as they were not previously used to claim unemployment compensation.

     DOL must promptly contact the claimant's most recent employer for wage information that may not yet have bee submitted from regular quarterly reports. This will require employers to research and respond to wage requests on an as-needed basis. For the time being, employers who now report to the state electronically will be required to respond to wage requests in writing.

     These expanded unemployment compensation benefit provisions run from Jan. 1, 2003 until Dec. 31, 2005 or until three years after it is implemented, whichever is later.