Court Opinion

ID: 9717702
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:08:54.633343+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:54.700475
License: Public Domain

DOYLE, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion because I believe that these appeals are controlled by Campbell v. Unemployment Compensation Board of Review, 175 Pa.Super. 592, 106 A.2d 687 (Pa.Super.1954). The majority attempts to distinguish Campbell from the present case because Campbell involved .a layoff rather than a lockout. However, this distinction is not persuasive because both a layoff and a lockout involve a unilateral decision on the part of an employer to make work unavailable to a claimant. Therefore, the lockout in the present case is not a basis for distinction from Campbell, and I would apply Campbell to the present case.
Applying Campbell, it is undisputed that, prior to retirement, Claimants’ unemployment was due to Employer’s lockout, and I disagree with the majority as to the effect that Claimants’ retirement had on their eligibility for benefits. As the Campbell Court noted:
As hereinbefore indicated, prior to July 16 the company was not able to furnish employment to the claimant ... and this was so irrespective of whether the claimant was on the active or the retired list. Thus the claimant could not become unemployed as a result of his own voluntary act until such time as his retirement was the proximate cause of his unemployment —the uncontroverted testimony indicates that July 16 was the ‘time’, for on that date he would have been recalled to work had he not retired. Since all the claim weeks in question were prior to July 16, the purported date of recall, the claimant must be deemed eligible for benefits since his unemployment was ‘due to’ lack of work at the establishment of his last employer.
Campbell, 106 A.2d at 689 (emphasis added). Similarly in the present case, as a result of the lockout, Employer did not, and was not in a position, to offer Claimants employment regardless of their status as retired or active. Thus, Claimants’ unemployment during that time was “due to” the lockout and was not due to the Claimants’ retirement.
The majority opinion states: “Further work would have been available to them, had they not chosen to retire.” (Op. p. 732.) That is absolutely factually incorrect; on July 1, 1997, when Claimants chose to retire there was no work available for them because Occidental Chemical Corporation had chosen to engage in a lockout.
Furthermore, the majority, citing Hoffman v. Unemployment Compensation Board of Review, 524 Pa. 470, 574 A.2d 57 (1990), and High v. Unemployment Compensation Board of Review, 505 Pa. 379, 479 A.2d 967 (1984), attempts to avoid this conclusion by noting that Claimants’ eligibility or ineligibility for benefits is determined on a week-to-week basis. I agree. Bút applying this principle, however, the majority posits that Claimants’ retirement eliminated the effect of Employer’s lockout and made Claimants’ retirement the sole cause of their unemployment, rendering them ineligible for unemployment compensation benefits. However, High and the policies underlying that decision are not applicable here. High involved the issue of whether the Reading Education Association’s rejection of the School District’s offer to resume work under an expired collective bargaining agreement converted a lockout to a strike, thus eliminating the effect of the district’s decision to lockout its employees. It is clear that the present case does not involve the issue of whether Occidental’s lockout was converted to a strike by *735Claimants’ actions. Clearly, their retirement had no effect on the status of the work stoppage as a lockout, nor did it convert the lockout to a strike.
It is, of course, black letter law to state that a claimant’s eligibility for benefits must be determined on a weekly basis by reference to Section 402 of the Unemployment Compensation Law1, but if we look at the underlying facts presented in this appeal, up until the new collective bargaining agreement was signed in late October of 1997, had Claimants appeared at the gates of Occidental for work they would have been informed that the lockout initiated by Employer on April 27, 1997, was still in effect, and there was no work available. Therefore, any discussion or application of Section 402(b) of the law dealing with a “voluntary quit” and whether Claimants had a necessitous and compelling reason to quit their employment is totally irrelevant; one cannot voluntarily quit from a job which does not exist because of the employer’s lockout.2
Accordingly, I would reverse the Unemployment Compensation Board of Review and remand the case back to the Board for a calculation of benefits.
Judge FRIEDMAN joins this dissenting opinion.

. Act of December 5, 1936, Second Ex.Sess., P.L. (1937), 2897, as amended, 43 P.S. §802(b).

. To paraphrase, and by extension, analogize Campbell to the case at bar: Because all the claim weeks in question were prior to November 4, the date that employees returned to work at Occidental under the new collective bargaining agreement, the Claimants must be deemed eligible for benefits since their unemployment was "due to” a lock-out at the establishment of their last employer.