Court Opinion

ID: 9726890
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:11:38.521082+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:31.552268
License: Public Domain

Justice RIVERA-SOTO,
dissenting.
By judicial fiat, the majority upends the commonsense notion that striking employees have left their employment voluntarily and, hence, should be disqualified for unemployment compensation benefits. Instead, the majority upholds an award of unemployment compensation benefits to a group of striking nurses, workers who left their employment voluntarily. That determination (1) runs contrary to the basic premises of the Unemployment Compensation Law, N.J.S.A. 43:21-1 to -24.30; (2) misapprehends the import of the disqualification provisions of that Law, N.J.S.A 43:21 — 5(d); and (3) ignores stark economic reality. For each of those reasons, I respectfully dissent.
*369I.
In 1936, while this country was in the throes of the Great Depression, the Legislature adopted the Unemployment Compensation Law. L. 1936, c. 270. In doing so, the Legislature made clear that it is “[ijnvoluntary unemployment [which] is therefore a subject of general interest and concern which requires appropriate action by the legislature to prevent its spread and to lighten its burden which now so often falls with crushing force upon the unemployed worker and his family.” N.J.S.A 43:21-2 (codifying L. 1936, c. 270, § 2) (emphasis supplied). Construing the Unemployment Compensation Law, we have explained that “the Legislature indicated that the underlying mission of the [Unemployment Compensation Law] is ‘to afford protection against the hazards of economic insecurity due to involuntary unemployment.’ ” Brady v. Bd. of Review, 152 N.J. 197, 211, 704 A.2d 547 (1997) (quoting Yardville Supply Co. v. Bd. of Review, 114 N.J. 371, 374, 554 A.2d 1337 (1989)). We also have made clear that “the purpose of the [Unemployment Compensation Law] is to provide some income for the worker earning nothing, because he is out of work through no fault or act of his own.” Id. at 212, 704 A.2d 547 (quoting Yardville Supply Co., supra, 114 N.J. at 375, 554 A.2d 1337). That limitation — that unemployment compensation benefits are available only to those whose status as unemployed is involuntary — is codified in the Unemployment Compensation Law. See N.J.S.A 43:21-5(a) (providing that “[a]n individual shall be disqualified for benefits ... [f]or the week in which the individual has left work voluntarily without good cause attributable to such work, and for each week thereafter until the individual becomes reemployed and works four weeks in employment”) (emphasis supplied). See generally, Olivieri v. Y.M.F. Carpet, Inc., 186 N.J. 511, 525-26, 897 A.2d 1003 (2006).
The application of those bedrock principles to this ease is straightforward. Here, approximately 280 nurses employed at an operating community hospital exercised their collective bargaining and concerted employment action rights, and went on strike, *370seeking to impose their will on their employer; in other words, the nurses, of their own volition, abandoned their employment for the purpose of coercing their employer to comply with their demands. That was an economic risk each of those nurses undertook voluntarily. And, that voluntary decision alone should suffice to disqualify those employees, as a matter of law, from unemployment compensation benefits.
The suggestion that striking employees nevertheless should be eligible for unemployment compensation benefits is one that has been proposed and rejected consistently. For example, as early as 1945, the reasoning that undergirds the disqualification of striking workers for unemployment compensation benefits was noted as follows:
[i]f benefits were paid to workers on strike while work at the establishment was not being done because of the dispute, it might be contended that the state was taking sides in the dispute by paying benefits to workers in recognition of their loss of wage income while doing nothing to diminish the loss to the employer because of the non-performance of work at his establishment.
[Leonard Lesser, La&or Disputes and Unemployment Compensation, 55 Yale L.J. 167, 167 n. 4 (1945-46).]
Fifteen years later, a 1960 editorial in the New Jersey Law Journal observed that:
Several bills which would amend the New Jersey Unemployment Compensation Law in a number of varying respects are pending action by the State Senate.
The most controversial area of all is that of the labor dispute. The recent nationwide steel strike has prompted an increase in the demands of organized labor that strikers be made eligible for unemployment compensation____
The original purpose of the labor dispute disqualification provision in our Unemployment Compensation Law was to enable the state Unemployment Compensation Fund to remain a wholly neutral factor in labor disputes. The apparent trend toward making the Fund a source of strike benefits raises some serious public policy questions.
[Editorial, Public Policy and Unemployment Compensation Law Amendments, 83 N.J.L.J. 240 (May 12,1960) (emphasis supplied).]
The 1960 proposal to extend unemployment compensation benefits to striking workers was not adopted.
Seven years after that, in 1967, the highly disputed proposal to grant unemployment compensation benefits to striking workers *371was adopted — but only in part — when the Legislature amended N.J.S.A. 43:21-5(d) to provide that, starting January 1, 1968, the disqualification for unemployment compensation benefits for striking employees would lapse once those employees had been on strike for six weeks. L. 1967, c. 30, § 3 (eff. Apr. 24,1967). That amendment stirred a maelstrom of citizen discontent, which found its voice in the November 1967 election season. Chastened by the electorate, the Legislature immediately repealed that provision, explaining its reasoning as follows:
This proposed bill provides for the elimination from the Unemployment Compensation Law of those provisions which, as of January 1, 1968, permit compensation to workers under conditions not previously allowed.
Under the law now in effect workers unemployed due to a strike are eligible to receive full benefits after a 6-week waiting period. This act deletes this category of unemployment from the law entirely.
Additionally, the act would correct a dangerous imbalance presently existing in the procedures of free collective bargaining. By making this correction the State will once again permit employers and employees to negotiate without interference by the State in their efforts to achieve a satisfactory working contract
[Sponsor’s Statement to Senate Bill 1, L. 1968, c. 1 (emphasis supplied).]
In his January 31, 1968 signing statement in respect of that repealer, Chief Justice (then Governor) Hughes explained:
I have been presented with Senate Bill 1, which amends the Unemployment Compensation Law so as to remove the provision [adopted the prior year and effective for only thirty days] permitting the payment of benefits to those on strike after a work stoppage has continued for more than six weeks, subject to certain safeguards____
I have reflected carefully upon this bill and have decided to sign it.
In reaching this decision, I have given full and sympathetic consideration to the viewpoint of labor as well as that of the business community and, as should always be the case, to the interest of the larger public.
The inclusion of strike benefits in the bill adopted last year caused in this State a certain polarization of views, sometimes strong and sharp in their expression, with regard not at all to the basic improvements in the Act, but to the single question of strike benefits. This dispute, and particularly the feelings of estrangement which accompanied it, should come to an end. Both labor and the business community, as well as the larger public to which I refer, have too much at stake in a prospering and progressive New Jersey to risk that progress in an unavailing stalemate.
When the strike benefit clause was included last year, I favored such legislation in total concept because it seemed to me — and this is still my feeling — to be not only correct in principle, but also in the best interest of the State. However, it was *372and is the sort of question upon which reasonable differences of opinion can exist and, moreover, can honestly exist.
This past Fall saw an election in which the question of strike benefits seemed to be projected as a clear, even a dominant, issue. And I believe the people by their vote indicated in unmistakable terms their belief and desire that individuals on strike — even with the safeguards provided by the Act — should not be paid unemployment compensation. Under our system of governmental checks and balances, without abandoning in any way the responsibility of executive authority with regai-d to legislation, the existence of such an apparently overwhelming consensus must be persuasive in the just exercise of that authority.
[Signing Statement, L. 1968, c. 1 (eff. Jan. 30,1968) (emphasis supplied).] 1
The lesson our long history in this area teaches is clear: when confronted with the same issue as presented in this case, our Legislature and Executive responded with wisdom tempered by humility. The decision-making paradigm evident in Chief Justice (then Governor) Hughes’s now forty-year-old words should be our guide, not something to be ignored or dismissed out of hand.1
2
*373II.
The majority ignores that humble wisdom and interprets N.J.S.A. 43:21-5(d) in a directly contradictory, and illogical, manner: as somehow allowing striking employees who voluntarily left their employment to remain eligible nevertheless for unemployment compensation benefits. That interpretation is wrong, as it is contrary to the plain language of the statute.
N.J.S.A. 43:21-5, titled “Disqualification for benefits,” sets forth seven disqualifying criteria that render an employee ineligible for unemployment compensation benefits. First, subsection (a), as noted earlier, describes the core and mandatory disqualification from unemployment compensation benefits: an employee who leaves his employment “voluntarily without good cause attributable to such work[,]” in the stark language of the statute, “shall be disqualified for benefits])]” N.J.S.A 43:21-5(a) (emphasis supplied). Second, subsection (b) addresses those instances where an employee has been discharged for misconduct; it provides that an employee shall be disqualified for unemployment compensation benefits “[f]or the week in which the individual has been suspended or discharged for misconduct connected with the work, and for the five weeks which immediately follow that week[.]” N.J.S.A. 43:21-5(b). Third, subsection (c) penalizes those who, while receiving unemployment benefits, fail to seek or accept substitute employment; it enjoins that
[i]f it is found that the individual has failed, without good cause, either to apply for available, suitable work when so directed by the employment office or the director or to accept suitable work when it is offered, or to return to the individual’s customary self-employment (if any) when so directed by the director. The disqualification shall continue for the week in which the failure occurred and for the three weeks which immediately follow that week[.]
[N.J.S.A 43:21 — 5(c).]
Fourth, subsection (d) — the provision on which the majority relies — provides that employees involved in a labor dispute are *374disqualified from unemployment compensation benefits unless a statutorily enumerated exception applies. It states the general rule as follows: “An individual shall be disqualified for benefits ... [i]f it is found that this unemployment is due to a stoppage of work which exists because of a labor dispute at the factory, establishment or other premises at which the individual is or was last employed.” N.J.S.A. 43:21-5(d). That provision admits of two, and only two, exceptions to the disqualification for unemployment compensation benefits to those whose unemployment is caused by “a stoppage of work which exists because of a labor dispute[.]” First, the statute exempts from disqualification those who are unemployed by reason of a labor dispute if the following two factors coalesce:
(a) The individual is not participating in or financing or directly interested in the labor dispute which caused the stoppage of work; and
(b) The individual does not belong to a grade or class of workers of which, immediately before the commencement of the stoppage, there were members employed at the premises at which the stoppage occurs, any of whom are participating in or financing or directly interested in the dispute; provided that if in any ease in which (a) or (b) above applies, separate branches of work which are commonly conducted as separate businesses in separate premises are conducted in separate departments of the same premises, each department shall, for the purpose of this subsection, be deemed to be a separate factory, establishment, or other premises.
[.N.J.S.A. 43:21 — 5(d)(1)(a) and (b) (emphasis supplied).] 3
Next, subsection (d) exempts from disqualification those employees who have been “locked-out,” that is, those employees who, although engaged in a labor dispute, have not gone out on strike and wish to continue to work but who are nonetheless barred from the work site by the employer. In those instances, the statutory exemption from disqualification applies if the worker “has been prevented from working by the employer, even though the individual’s ... representative has directed the employees in the individual’s collective bargaining unit to work under the preexisting terms and conditions of employment, and the employees had not *375engaged in a strike immediately before being prevented from working.” N.J.S.A. 43:21-5(d)(2).4
Fifth, subsection (e) disqualifies a worker from receiving unemployment compensation for any period in which that employee received compensation from his employer in lieu of notice of employment termination. N.J.S.A. 43:21-5(e). Sixth, subsection (f) disqualifies a worker from receiving unemployment compensation during any period in which that worker is receiving unemployment compensation benefits from another source. N.J.S.A. 43:21 — 5(f). And, seventh, subsection (g) disqualifies, for a period of one year, any worker who procures unemployment compensation benefits “as the result of any false or fraudulent representation!;.]” N.J.S.A. 43:21 — 5(g)(1).5
Focusing on the provisions of subsection (d), the majority reasons that, because the hospital/employer did not suffer a “stoppage of work” as a result of the strike, the nurses/employees were not disqualified. That reasoning turns the statute on its head.
*376N.J.S.A. 43:21 — 5(d) clearly states that “[a]n individual shall be disqualified ... [i]f it is found that this unemployment is due to a stoppage of work which exists because of a labor dispute at the factory, establishment or other premises at which the individual is or was last employed.” The majority, accepting the definition of “stoppage of work” adopted by the New Jersey Department of Labor, concludes that there was no “stoppage of work which exists because of a labor dispute” and, hence, the disqualification criterion in subsection (d) is not operative.
The majority’s analysis is premised on the Department of Labor’s regulation that defines a “stoppage of work.” That regulation, N.J.A.C. 12:17-12.2(a), states that
“Stoppage of work” means a substantial curtailment of work which is due to a labor dispute. Justification for the labor dispute may not be considered. An employer is considered to have a substantial curtailment of work if not more than 80 percent of the normal production of goods or services is met.
Defining “stoppage of work” as a “substantial curtailment of work which is due to a labor dispute” is a sensible interpretation; because a “stoppage” is “the act of stopping or the state of being stopped[,]” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged 2251 (1966), that portion of the definition appears both rational and reasonable on its face. The difficulty, however, arises from the regulatory definition of a “substantial curtailment of work” as a twenty percent reduction in output. The hospital/employer argues that there is no factual basis on which to ground that regulatory definition, and I am compelled to agree.
No doubt, administrative regulations are entitled to a presumption of validity, N.J. State League of Municipalities v. Dep’t of Cmty. Affairs, 158 N.J. 211, 222, 729 A.2d 21 (1999). That said,
[h]owever, the deference afforded regulations does not go so far as to permit an administrative agency under the guise of an administrative interpretation to give a statute any greater effect than is permitted by the statutory language. Nor can agency regulations alter the terms of a legislative enactment or frustrate the policy embodied in the statute. If a regulation is plainly at odds with the statute, the court must set it aside. As we have repeatedly stated, the judicial role is to ensure that an agency’s action does not violate express and implied legislative intent. *377Thus, the meaning of enabling legislation is pivotal to any analysis of the legitimacy of a rule.
[T.H. v. Div. of Developmental Disabilities, 189 N.J. 478, 490-91, 916 A.2d 1025 (2007) (citations, internal quotation marks and editing marks omitted).]
And, in determining the validity of challenged administrative regulations, our point of departure is the statute’s meaning and, “[o]rdinarily, we derive a statute’s meaning from its language.” Id. at 491, 916 A.2d 1025 (citing State v. Sutton, 132 N.J. 471, 625 A.2d 1132 (1993)).
Nothing in this record provides any basis whatsoever for the Department of Labor’s adoption of what clearly is a totally arbitrary “80% rule” to define a “stoppage of work.” Indeed, in its own answers to the public comments on this regulation, the Department of Labor boldly asserted that “[t]he rules provide that only those individuals involved in the labor dispute mil be disqualified for benefits.” Comments of the Department of Labor, Division of Employment Security and Job Training to the proposed adoption of N.J.A.C. 12:17-12.2, 29 N.J.R. 5162 (Dee. 15, 1997) (emphasis supplied). Repeatedly, the Department of Labor claimed that it “recognizes unemployment insurance as an insurance program and not an entitlement program ... [and, therefore, individuals must contribute to the unemployment system and must meet eligibility requirements in order to receive unemployment benefits.” Ibid. Yet, despite those clear statements of intent, nothing — absolutely nothing — in the published history of the adoption of this regulation supports the arbitrary “80% rule” adopted by the Department of Labor and on which the majority relies.
In the absence of any basis supporting the administrative rule, we must revert to the necessary starting point: the statute. And, the statutory mandate here unequivocally requires that any worker who is unemployed “due to a stoppage of work which exists because of a labor dispute” is disqualified from unemployment compensation benefits. Clearly, any plain language reading of the statute, N.J.S.A. 1:1-1, demands the conclusion that a worker who goes out on strike is engaged in a “stoppage of work;” at the risk *378of stating the obvious, that is precisely the point of a strike, to stop work and thereby bring economic pressure to bear on an employer. Therefore, to the extent the regulations of the Department of Labor exceed a commonsense reading of the enabling statute and graph a disqualification requirement not otherwise found in the statute, that regulation is ultra vires and cannot be sustained. See In re Freshwater Wetlands Protection Act Rules, 180 N.J. 478, 488-89, 852 A.2d 1083 (2004).
Because the nurses/employees here voluntarily engaged in “a stoppage of work which exists because of a labor dispute” and, as a result, they were unemployed of their own volition, the plain language of N.J.S.A. 43:21-5(d) requires that they be disqualified for benefits, a conclusion buttressed by the only prior case in which this Court has interpreted the provisions of N.J.S.A 43:21— 5(d). In Ford Motor Co. v. New Jersey Department of Labor and Industry, 5 N.J. 494, 76 A.2d 256 (1950), this Court considered whether unemployment benefits were available to non-striking employees at two assembly plants in New Jersey. Those employees were laid-off because a labor dispute and resulting strike at different out-of-state manufacturing plants stopped the flow of materials to the New Jersey plants. The Court held that “geographical separation and the nature of the function combine to make the New Jersey plants distinct establishments within the intendment of the statutory provision under consideration.” Id. at 505, 76 A.2d 256. The Court noted that the Unemployment Compensation Law provides for “compensation where the unemployment is involuntary.” Ibid, (emphasis supplied). Concluding that the New Jersey employees’ unemployment was not voluntary but, instead, was caused by external forces beyond the employees’ control, the Court ruled that those employees were not disqualified from unemployment compensation benefits, explaining that “[t]here was no participation in the strike here by the local unions or the individual claimants, such as constitutes a bar to relief under the statute.” Id. at 506, 76 A.2d 256.
*379Again, the principled conclusion is inescapable: employees who voluntarily go on strike are disqualified, as a matter of law, from receiving unemployment compensation benefits. Any differing conclusion does needless violence to the core principles on which the Unemployment Compensation Law and its system of benefits are founded.
III.
We must all remain mindful of the context of this case. Almost 280 nurses went on strike on April 19, 2004; on June 6, 2004, ninety-seven of those nurses filed for unemployment compensation benefits. Once this labor dispute was resolved, and the strike was concluded, those nurses who sought to return to their jobs were re-employed. Now, more than four years later, when the people of this State and of this Nation are confronting record unemployment levels and dismal economic prospects, the majority proposes to extend an unwarranted and unearned economic largesse to those who intentionally walked away from their jobs for the sole purpose of exerting economic harm on their employer and physical harm to the very patients these nurses were sworn to protect and serve.
Instead of applying plain common sense, the majority embraces the Department of Labor’s regulation that measures whether there has been “a stoppage of work which exists because of a labor dispute” based on the amount by which the strike curtails the employer’s functions. That methodology, at its core, is illogical. It is sheer perversity that this employer — a hospital — is to be penalized because it was professional and capable enough to react quickly and provide continuity of care to its patients and the community it serves. In doing so, it was caught in a quintessential Catch-22: because of the concern that a strike by healthcare professions would adversely affect innocent third parties — the patients and surrounding community — a hospital must prepare and deploy contingency plans, such that the National Labor Relations Act requires that “[a] labor organization before engag*380ing in any strike, picketing, or other concerted refusal to work at any health care institution shall, not less than ten days prior to such action, notify the institution in writing and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service of that intention[.]” 29 U.S.C. § 158(g). Still, the majority holds those laudable efforts by the hospital against it. That is perverse, and nothing less.
The plain and grave fact of the matter is that New Jersey faces an unprecedented unemployment compensation crisis. It recently has been reported that “[ujnemployment compensation claims are nearly double what they were this time last year, with 140,000 New Jerseyans collecting a check last week and 15,000 new claims.” Steve Chambers, “Corzine orders more staffing to handle unemployment claims,” The Star-Ledger, Dec. 6, 2008, available at http://www.nj.com/starledger/stories/index.ssfi/base/news-14/1228541733222950.xml&coll=l. This surge in unemployment compensation claims has required that the State “deploy 130 workers, some new hires and others transfers from across state government, to deal with a growing backlog of unemployment claims.” Ibid.6 The inevitable, of course, now has occurred: “A surge in jobless claims has battered the fund that bankrolls unemployment benefits in New Jersey, exhausting all of the $260 million emergency infusion sent five months ago and raising the prospect taxpayers will be asked for more.” Dunstan McNichol, “Surge in jobless claims taps out New Jersey unemployment fund,” The Star-Ledger, Dec. 8, 2008, available at http://www.nj. com/news/ledger/topstories/index.ssi/2008/12/surge_in_jobless_ claims_taps_o.html. Although “[businesses currently pay about $2 billion a year into the fund,” “[i]f the fund’s balances continue to decline, businesses will face an automatic $400 million tax hike next June [when a] similar increase on businesses was averted this year by the state’s $260 million infusion.” Ibid. The trend is *381frightening: “At its peak about four years ago, the fund contained $3 billion. But before the state’s cash infusion earlier this year, its balance had sunk to $161 million — not even enough to meet one month’s worth of claims.” Ibid. And, New Jersey is not alone; it was recently reported:
With unemployment claims reaching their highest levels in decades, states are running out of money to pay benefits, and some are turning to the federal government for loans or increasing taxes on businesses to make the payments.
Thirty states are at risk of having the funds that pay out unemployment benefits become insolvent over the next few months, according to the National Association of State Workforce Agencies. Funds in two states, Indiana and Michigan, have already dried up, and both states are borrowing from the federal government to make payments to the unemployed.
[Jennifer Steinhauer, “State’s Funds for Jobless Are Drying Up,” N.Y. Times, Dec. 15, 2008, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/us/15funds.html.]
That is the bleak reality that informs this Court’s decision today.
We have made clear that
[although the [Unemployment Compensation Law] is to be liberally construed in favor of claimants to effectuate its remedial purposes, we have emphasized that it is also important to preserve the unemployment insurance trust fund against claims by those not intended to share in its benefits. The basic policy of the law is advanced as well when benefits are denied in improper cases as when they are allowed in proper cases. The [Unemployment Compensation] Act, then, is designed to serve not simply the interest of the unemployed, but also the interest of the general public. To give the correct interpretation of this policy, the Court must carry in mind the dire and distressing situations against which the statute, as a matter of stated public policy, is directed.
[Brady, supra, 152 N.J. at 212, 704 A.2d 547 (citations, internal quotation marks and editing marks omitted).]
The Unemployment Insurance Fund is neither designed nor intended as a substitute strike fund for those who chose to exercise their collective bargaining and strike rights; its purpose is to provide assistance solely to those who lose their jobs through no fault of their own. Only an exquisite irony would require an employer to pay into a fund that will subsidize those who wish to do that employer harm. Yet, that is the very result the majority endorses. Because I cannot join in this unmerited and unwise extension of unemployment compensation benefits — -at any time, and much less at a time of grave economic distress when those funds should be reserved for those rightly entitled to them — I *382would remand the cause to the Board of Review for the entry of an order denying unemployment compensation benefits to these applicants.

TV.

New Jersey’s unemployment compensation system of benefits is designed to assist those workers who lose their jobs through no fault of their own, that is, those whose unemployment is involuntary. If that is so, then the proposition that unemployment compensation benefits should be made available to a worker who voluntarily leaves his or her job is plainly without support, particularly when the reason for the employee’s voluntary leaving is to engage in a strike. Yet, based on notions foreign to the clear dictates of the Unemployment Compensation Law, the majority cobbles together an illogical result. In short, the majority’s determination awarding unemployment compensation benefits to these applicants (1) runs counter to the basic premises of the Unemployment Compensation Law, N.J.S.A. 43:21-1 to -24.30; (2) misapprehends the import of N.J.S.A 43:21-5(d); and (3) ignores stark economic reality. For each of those reasons — both individually and collectively — I respectfully dissent.
For reversal and reinstatement — Chief Justice RABNER and Justices LONG, LaVECCHIA ALBIN, WALLACE and HOENS — 6.
For affirmance — Justice RIVERA-SOTO — 1.

 Chief Justice (then Governor) Hughes's hesitation in signing L. 1968, c. 1, § 1 (eff. Jan. 30, 1968) into law was due solely to that repealer’s similar repeal of the "lock-out" exception to the disqualification for benefits for striking workers. The "lock-out” exception from disqualification was reinstated pursuant to L. 2005, c. 103, § 1 (eff. Aug. 26, 2005) (codified at present NJ.S.A. 43:21-5(d)(2)).

 The majority expends great effort to assert that the views expressed in this dissent ”ignore[] this state’s case law, Board of Review decisions, and the overwhelming weight of authority in this country construing provisions similar to N.J.S.A. 43:21 — 5(d)[,]” ante at 359, 963 A.2d at 301, and that this dissent "turns a blind eye” to reality, ante at 359, 963 A.2d at 301. In respect of the former accusation, one need only focus on Chief Justice (then Governor) Hughes’s plain and simple words: "individuals on strike ... should not be paid unemployment compensation." Any other conclusion is nothing more than a sleight-of-hand. The latter accusation — that somehow it is the position advanced in this dissent that has ignored reality — is addressed below. See infra at 355-59, 963 A.2d at 298-301.
Finally, the majority also asserts that I "would substitute [my] own policy choices for those made by our Legislature in 1936.” Ante at 359, 963 A.2d at 301. Suffice it to note that I would read the Legislature’s words with both common sense and common wisdom, a process that results in the conclusion advanced here. Thus, I gladly reject the majority's tortured reasoning that turns our system of unemployment compensation benefits on its head and rewards those who voluntarily abandon their jobs. If faithfully hewing to the belief that unemployment compensation benefits are reserved solely for those who are *373involuntarily unemployed means being accused of somehow neglecting some judicially manufactured legislative intent, it is a scarlet letter I bear proudly.

 Neither exception is relevant here.

 It is instructive that, in an amendment to the 1936 Unemployment Compensation Law proposed just three years after that Law's original passage, the amendment's sponsor described that "[t]he effect of the act as now written is to penalize any employee who desires to improve his conditions of employment by joining with a labor organization to enforce his demands for better conditions.” Sponsor’s Statement, Assembly Bill 194 (1939). Although that bill was not reported out of committee, the sponsor’s statement accurately describes the ultimate import of NJ.S.A. 43:21 — 5(d): unionized employees are "entitle[d] ... to the benefits provided by the act, unless they engage in a strike or walkout [.]" Ibid, (emphasis supplied).

 The statute also recites four limited instances where voluntary unemployment will not serve as a disqualifier: (1) when the worker is in training under the Trade Act of 1974, 19 U.S.C. § 2296(a)(1), N.J.S.A. 43:21-5(h); (2) when the worker is a full-time student either attending a qualified training course or who otherwise has been employed the minimum amount required to establish a claim for benefits, N.I.S.A. 43:21 —5 (i); (3) when the worker voluntarily leaves employment as a result of being a victim of domestic violence, NJ.S.A. 43:21 — 5(j); and (4) when a worker voluntarily leaves employment in order to accompany a spouse in active militaiy service who is transferred outside New Jersey, N.I.S.A. 43:21 — 5(k).

 New Jersey does not stand alone in this crisis. See, e.g., Patrick McGeehan, "State's Unemployment System Buckles Under Surging Demand,” N.Y. Times, Jan. 7, 2009, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/nyregion/07 unemployment.html?_r= 1 &ref=nyregion.