Court Opinion

ID: 9551072
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:47:18.239301+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:23:00.593310
License: Public Domain

Hill, J.
(dissenting) — The idea that persons can voluntarily quit employment which remains available to them because, for personal reasons, they choose to live where employment is not available and yet still qualify for unemployment compensation seemed to the trial court a perversion of the purpose of the legislation. And so it does to me.
The purposes of the act are expressed in its preamble, which says that, because “ . . . economic insecurity due to unemployment is a serious menace to the health, morals and welfare of the people of this state,” that “involuntary unemployment is, therefore, a subject of general interest and concern which requires appropriate action by the legislature to prevent its spread . . . ”
To ameliorate the conditions caused by involuntary unemployment, “which now so often falls with crushing force upon the unemployed worker,” is the object of the legislation. But the majority says that the avowed purpose as expressed in the preamble must yield to the specific language used in the act.
The specific language, as set forth in the majority opinion, is
“An individual shall be disqualified for benefits for the calendar week in which he has left work voluntarily without good cause and for the five calendar weeks which immediately follow such week.” RCW 50.20.050.
In the light of the purpose of the act, I would say that “good cause” would be circumstances connected with his work, such as working conditions made unbearable by su*93pervisors or foremen — but certainly not just a mere desire to live in some other community.
But the majority says that such an interpretation would be limiting “good cause” for voluntary unemployment to those causes which are “attributable to or connected with the claimant’s employment,” and that such an interpretation is repudiated by the legislative history.
I find no such repudiation. The legislative history relied upon is that, when the legislature in 1945 repealed all acts relating to unemployment compensation and made a fresh start, the then existing legislation relative to disqualification for benefits was as follows:
“Section 5. Disqualification for Benefits. An individual shall be disqualified for benefits:
“(a) For the calendar week in which he has left work voluntarily without good cause for reasons related to the work in question, if so found by the Commissioner, and for a period ensuing immediately thereafter of not less than two, nor more than five, weeks as the Commissioner shall determine (in addition to the waiting period).” (Italics ours.) Laws of 1943, ch. 127, § 3.
The 1945 Act1 omitted the italicized words, and the majority concludes that the legislature therefore disapproved of them. In the light of the preamble and the express purpose of the legislation, it seems more consistent to say that the legislature regarded the omitted words as being redundant and but a restatement of the clear purposes of the act.
On this omission, the Commissioner of the Employment Security Department has, entirely contrary to the express purpose of the act, determined that purely personal reasons for the termination of employment constitute “good cause,” and hence no disqualification for benefits.
I decline, on the basis of what seems to me a perfectly proper and natural omission, to approve such an administrative practice.
I would affirm the trial court.
Weaver, J., concurs with Hill, J.

Laws of 1945, chapter 35, § 73.