Bill limiting jobless benefits passes

JEFFERSON CITY — Critics of a bill that would make it easier to disqualify workers from jobless benefits tied up the Missouri Senate for more than nine hours before it passed early Tuesday morning.

Democrats opposing the House-passed bill objected most strongly to a provision that would have made it harder for whistle-blowers to sue when they are fired for their disclosures. They ended their filibuster after Republican leaders agreed to drop that provision.

The legislation, approved 27-4, is designed to overhaul an unemployment compensation system that has run into financial troubles in recent years.

The state needed to borrow from 2003 to 2005 just to keep the system afloat and still owes $238 million.

Supporters say the bill’s changes are necessary to solve existing problems and ensure the state doesn’t face future financial woes.

Business groups and some Republicans sought to require that fired whistle-blowers prove their employer had broken the law before being able to sue if they are fired.

Sen. Joan Bray, D-St. Louis, said the provision sends the wrong message to the judicial system and to workers.

“We’re saying to whistle-blowers, ‘Don’t bother, we don’t want to know when things are going wrong,’” she said.

The bill would also allow workers testing positive for any amount of drugs or alcohol or those fired for absenteeism or tardiness to be barred from from receiving jobless benefits.

Current law requires that a worker have more than 50 nanograms of marijuana or a blood alcohol content greater than .08 percent to be disqualified from unemployment compensation.

The series of changes approved by the Senate include Sen. Victor Callahan’s amendment that would fine employers $25,000 if they demote or fire workers been called to active military duty since Sept. 11, 2001.

Callahan, D-Independence, said he was trying to protect innocent workers who have been forced to leave their jobs because of “heinous actions by their employers.” No senator voted against the amendment.

The Senate’s changes to the bill mean lawmakers have until 6 p.m. Friday to reconcile differences between the two versions.

In the House, the unemployment bill passed by just two votes and prompted a hostile inter-Republican floor fight in which Todd Smith of Sedalia accused the bill’s sponsor, Brad Roark of Springfield, of presenting misleading information.

Smith said supporters were trying “to fix the system on the backs of workers who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own” so “employers get a windfall.”

Roark said despite past efforts to overhaul it, the system for paying out jobless benefits “is still failing, and that’s why we’re still having problems.”