Senate Bill No. 687
(By Senator Bowman)
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[Introduced February 23, 2004; referred to the Committee on the
Judiciary; and then to the Committee on Finance.]
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A BILL to amend and reenact §21A-6-1 of the code of West Virginia,
1931, as amended, relating to collection of unemployment
benefits by corporate officers.
Be it enacted by the Legislature of West Virginia:
That §21A-6-1 of the code of West Virginia, 1931, as amended,
be amended and reenacted to read as follows:
ARTICLE 6. EMPLOYEE ELIGIBILITY; BENEFITS.
§21A-6-1. Eligibility qualifications.
An unemployed individual shall be eligible to receive benefits
only if the commissioner finds that:
(1) He has registered for work at and thereafter continues to
report at an employment office in accordance with the regulations
of the commissioner;
(2) He has made a claim for benefits in accordance with the
provisions of article seven of this chapter and has furnished his or her social security number, or numbers if he or she has more
than one such number;
(3) He or she
is able to work and is available for full-time
work for which he or she
is fitted by prior training or experience
and is doing that which a reasonably prudent person in his or her
circumstances would do in seeking work;
(4) He or she
has been totally or partially unemployed during
his or her
benefit year for a waiting period of one week prior to
the week for which he or she
claims benefits for total or partial
unemployment;
(5) He or she
has within his or her
base period been paid
wages for employment equal to not less than two thousand two
hundred dollars and must have earned wages in more than one quarter
of his or her
base period; and
(6) Beginning the first day of November, one thousand nine
hundred ninety-four, he or she
participates in reemployment
services, such as job search assistance services, if the individual
has been determined to be likely to exhaust regular benefits and
needs reemployment services pursuant to a profiling system
established by the commissioner, unless the commissioner determines
that:
(a) The individual has completed such services; or
(b) There is justifiable cause for the claimant's failure to
participate in such services; and
(7) An individual is not eligible for benefits from the date
of the sale of a business, until such time he or she is reemployed
and eligible for benefits based on the wages received through the
new employment,
if
the
business
was a corporation and the
individual was
an officer or a majority or controlling shareholder
in the corporation and was involved in the sale of the corporation.
An individual who has been paid wages four times his weekly benefit
amount may not use
wages
paid by a
corporation if the individual:
(a) Individually, or jointly with spouse, parent, sibling, or child
owns or controls twenty-five percent or more interest in the
corporation; or (b) is the spouse, parent, sibling,
or minor child
of any individual who owns or controls twenty-five
percent or more
interest in the corporation; and (c) is not permanently separated
from employment.
NOTE: The purpose of the change is to require corporate
officers to be reemployed after a sale at a corporation to be
eligible to receive benefits and to limit the benefits when the
corporation is owned by family members holding at least a
twenty-five percent interest in the corporation.
Strike-throughs indicate language that would be stricken from
the present law, and underscoring indicates new language that would
be added.