Court Opinion

ID: 7819917
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-09-07 17:50:21.599016+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:30:42.751745
License: Public Domain

J. Fred Jones, Justice, dissenting. I am unable to see wherein the substituted opinion on rehearing adds any soundness to the reasoning employed by the majority in the original opinion. I still dissent. The question in this case still remains whether the employees left their employment by reason of a labor dispute. I find no evidence at all that the appellants left their employment because of a labor dispute or that they were participating in, or were directly interested in, the labor dispute when they were required to leave their employment. The appellants were required to leave their employment until notified to return because a boiler blew up and there is not the slightest evidence in the record that the boiler blew up because of a labor dispute. The reason for leaving the employment in the first place is the controlling factor as I see it and not what occurred after the employees left their employment and while they remained on a lay-off status. The appellants were on a lay-off status because of the disabled boiler and were told that they would be notified by their employer when to return to work. The mere fact that a strike was subsequently called and the appellants, or some of them, might have been on a picket line where they could have seen steam issuing from the boiler house and thereby should have known that the boiler was again in operation and work would be available if they cared to return to work, simply does not make sense to me. Certainly there was a fact question as to whether the appellants subsequently participated in a labor dispute by appearing on a picket line, and as to whether they could have seen steam coming from the boiler house indicating that the boiler had been repaired and work was again available, but that is beside the issue in this case. Perhaps the law should be that rights to unemployment benefits should be denied an employee who has been laid off for other reasons if, and when, he subsequently participates in a labor dispute or strike while on a lay-off status, but I do not so interpret the law as it stood prior to the majority opinion in this case. It is my opinion that this case falls squarely within the rule of Harding Glass v. Crutcher, 244 Ark. 618, 426 S.W. 2d 403.1 see no difference in the employees’ status when they are on a lay-off status and collecting benefits when the labor dispute arises as in Harding Glass, and when they are on a lay-off status and should be collecting benefits when the labor dispute commences as in the case at bar. Certainly the employees in the case at bar should have been denied subsequent benefits if they had been notified to return to work and had failed to do so because of the labor dispute — that very thing probably would have occurred in this case, but the fact is, that it did not. Had the appellants been notified to return to work as the employer promised they would, and if they had then failed to return to work, it would have been then and only then that this court should agree they lost their employment by reason of a labor dispute. I would still reverse.