Iowa Workforce Development says workers need to be aware of the rules for unemployment as things change and businesses reopen.
Deputy director, Ryan West, says you won’t continue getting unemployment if you are called back to work. He says if your employer had to lay you off and they are calling you back, you should be able to go back to work.
West says if you do not go back to work, it will be considered a “voluntary quit,” and your unemployment will be suspended. There are some exceptions, including a diagnosis of COVID-19 that prevents you from working.
West says every case will be different and the individual issues will dictate what happens. But, he says if someone has a note from a doctor that says you should be out then that would allow you to stay home.
West says there is an easy way to figure out your situation. “I would just, first of all, go to the website, Iowaworkforcedevelopment.gov. We have so much information out there and now we are going back and paring it down to make it even easier to find everything. We really have a section for everything that has come down over the pike over the last several weeks. We’ve got a lot of new question and answer stuff out there,” according to West. He says you can try calling IWD, but expect to wait.
“Getting ahold on the phone is an exercise in patience. You have to sit there and bid your time — but we will get to you though,” he says. West says they continue to be getting a lot of calls about unemployment issues — but that could ease up as some businesses start to reopen at the end of this week.
“It has been such an unusual experience for everybody that it’s been kind of hard to predict,” West says. Iowa Workforce Development has seen record numbers of people impacted by coronavirus filing for unemployment in the last several weeks.