Court Opinion

ID: 9715666
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:11:34.250315+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:36.853764
License: Public Domain

Robert W. Hansen
(concurring). When their former employer closed down the paper plant in which they had been working, the former employees applied for unemployment compensation benefits for the weeks of joblessness that followed the permanent closing of their former place of employment. Even if a labor dispute was involved in the management decision to close the plant down, the former employees are entitled to unemployment compensation benefits under sec. 108.04(10), Stats., except “. . . for any week in which such . , . bona fide labor dispute is in active progress in the establishment . . .” in which they were employed. (Emphasis supplied.) With the plant permanently closed, there was no labor dispute left, much less one in active progress. There was no employer or employees to do the disputing. There was only a former employer and its former employees. There were no wages, hours or working conditions about which to dispute. Payroll and positions ended when the plant closed down. Whatever its reasons for so doing, when management permanently closed down the paper plant, any disagreement with its former employees was interred along with the plant operations. The state agency holding that the,former employees are entitled to unemployment compensation benefits is upheld solely for the reason that a permanently closed mill or factory cannot have a labor dispute in active progress any more than a corpse can have a toothache.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice Bruce F. Beilfuss and Mr. Justice Connor T. Hansen join in this concurring opinion.