Court Opinion

ID: 9722314
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 09:24:55.169368+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:33.884356
License: Public Domain

PETERSON, Justice
(dissenting).
The simple facts of this case are recited in the majority opinion. Claimant employee, employed by relator employer, was laid off for a specified 5-week period. She then removed from Babbitt, her place of permanent employment, to Minneapolis, a distance of 270 miles, where she obtained various temporary jobs and then enrolled in a CETA Program for bookkeeping training. While residing in Minneapolis, the employee returned to Babbitt to participate briefly in an intervening strike at her employer’s premises but did not return to her employment when recalled at the termination of the strike. She has been awarded unemployment compensation subsequent to that recall.
The commissioner determined that the employee’s relocation some 270 miles distant from the employer’s establishment constituted a good cause for her refusal to return to work at Babbitt:
The record establishes that claimant relocated to the Twin City area when she was in layoff status and the fact that she resided approximately 270 miles distant from the employer’s establishment establishes a good cause for refusing the [offer] of reemployment made on * * * December 8, 1977. We must therefore affirm the findings of the appeal tribunal.
The majority, treating the issue as one of fact, would affirm. However, viewing the issue as a question of law, I would reverse.
Minn.Stat. § 268.09, subd. 2 (1980), provides:
An individual shall be disqualified * * if the commissioner finds that he has failed, without good cause, * * * to accept suitable re-employment offered by a base period employer.
(a) In determining whether or not any work is suitable for an individual, the commissioner shall consider the degree of risk involved to his health, safety, and morals, his physical fitness and prior training, his experience, his length of unemployment and prospects of securing local work in his customary occupation, *550and the distance of the available work from his residence.
(b) Notwithstanding any other provisions of sections 268.03 to 268.24, no work shall be deemed suitable, and benefits shall not be denied thereunder to any otherwise eligible individual for refusing to accept new work under any of the following conditions:
(1) if the.position offered is vacant due directly to a strike, lockout, or other labor dispute;
(2) if the wages, hours, or other conditions of the work offered are substantially less favorable to the individual than those prevailing for similar work in the locality;
⅛ * * sfc * *
(4) if the individual is in training with the approval of the commissioner.
(Emphasis supplied.)
The statute clearly applies to a situation where an employee, laid off at one place, is offered reemployment at a different and distant place, i.e., had claimant employee been employed by the employer at Minneapolis and thereafter been offered employment at Babbitt, it would have been an unreasonable and unsuitable offer of employment within the meaning of the statute. But that is not the case. Here, the employer offered the employee identical work at the identical place where she had previously worked. An employee should not, under the statute, be allowed to use her voluntary move to a new residence — even assuming that what was a temporary change of residence had become permanent — to refuse to accept reemployment under identical conditions.
The majority opinion additionally refers to the fact that the employee was “enrolled in a retraining program to improve her marketable skills.” This is a reference to an additional reason stated by the appeals tribunal:
When the [December 8] offer of reemployment was made at the end of the strike in December 1977, the claimant still lived 270 miles from the place of employment and was productively engaged in vocational training that would provide her a job skill that probably would provide her more stable employment in the future.
The commissioner, in his modification of the appeals tribunal finding, did not adopt retraining as a reason for his decision to affirm the tribunal’s determination. That modification was with good reason, for it appears, without contradiction from the briefs, that employee was enrolled in the CETA Program without the formal approval of the commissioner, as required under Minn.Stat. § 268.09, subd. 2(b)(4) (1980). She is therefore conclusively presumed to be unavailable for work under Minn.Stat. § 268.08, subd. 1(3) (1980). See Shreve v. Department of Economic Security, 283 N.W.2d 506 (Minn.1979). Employee should therefore have been denied unemployment compensation on that basis as well.1

. The majority opinion adverts to Hendrickson v. Northfield Cleaners, 295 N.W.2d 384 (Minn.1980), for the general proposition that a determination of whether an employee refuses an offér of reemployment with good cause must be examined within the unique facts of each case. I do not disagree. The Hendrickson decision, in which I joined, is plainly distinguishable, both on its facts and the applicable law.