ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, January 18, 1997 TAG: 9701200036
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
WHO'S DENIED AID? Here's a closer look at three people who slipped through the cracks.
Some nights, Dorothy Skeen said, her knees and shoulder hurt so bad she crawled out of bed, ran a bath and then "sat in hot water and leaned on the tub and slept."
Skeen, a widow in her 60s, had started as a sewing machine operator at the Clintwood Garment Co. in Dickenson County, but then took a job as the factory's cleaning lady to avoid a layoff.
She said she couldn't handle all the mopping, lifting and climbing stairs. She asked if she could go back to sewing.
Her boss told her no. So Skeens quit and applied for jobless benefits.
The Virginia Employment Commission gave her another no. It said she didn't deserve unemployment checks because she didn't have "good cause" to leave her job.
She found a lawyer to help her, and they appealed the case up through the VEC, and then all the way to the state Court of Appeals.
She lost at every step.
For her attorney, Hugh O'Donnell, it was an old story.
O'Donnell, who works for Client Centered Legal Services of Southwest Virginia, has gone up against the VEC and employers hundreds of times since 1980. He contends the system is stacked against the unemployed - especially in Virginia's coalfields, a boom-and-bust area where jobs can be hard to find.
"What they've done is create a system that's not friendly to the people it's supposed to benefit - not by a long stretch of the imagination," he said. "It's just a harsh system. There's horror story after horror story of bizarre decisions."
The system's defenders say that's not the case.
VEC Commissioner Thomas Towberman said his agency treats unemployed people fairly.
"We try to look at the facts of the case," he said. "When people lose their jobs through no fault of their own, they get benefits. .. Virginia is not anti-worker. I don't believe that, and I don't believe the facts support that."
Bayard Harris, a Roanoke Valley lawyer who represents businesses in jobless cases, says that, in close calls, the commission sides with the ex-employee.
People aren't denied benefits if they're fired simply because they can't do their jobs. The people who are shut out, he said, are those who are guilty of "malicious or deliberate misconduct."
"People who are fired usually have done something," he said. "So, they don't get their reward."
In Dorothy Skeen's case, Attorney General Jim Gilmore argued that she had no right to benefits.
The VEC said she didn't offer medical testimony proving her physical problems. Also, it said, she didn't do enough to try to solve her problems before she quit; she told her boss she was having trouble doing the work, but never mentioned her specific ailments.
If she "had taken this reasonable step," the VEC said, her employer would have let her use a cart and a freight elevator to move supplies.
Skeen responded that her boss never told her about the elevator, and that management had never been helpful.
Other Legal Services clients in the coalfields have managed to win benefits. O'Donnell said, however, that the victories often come only after long appeals - and only because they're lucky enough to get a free Legal Services attorney. Few private lawyers will take unemployment cases. That, he said, leaves ex-workers overmatched against company lawyers and executives who are experienced at navigating a confusing system. VEC figures show most people give up when they're turned down for benefits.
It took eight months before Client Centered Legal Services could win benefits for a client who quit her job at a Buchanan County store after a customer came in and exposed himself to her.
She was working alone at the Hill Top Quick Stop, in a remote area along the West Virginia border. She had no alarm, no phone, and no way to lock the door during business hours. She had to grab a quarter from the register and go to a pay phone to call for help.
She said that incident - plus a parking-lot brawl in which one man tried to drive over another - left her afraid to come to work.
The owner told her he couldn't schedule anyone to work with her, or transfer her to another store, so she quit.
She was turned down on her initial VEC claim, and then again by an appeals examiner, who ruled "it does not appear that the behavior of the customer was so threatening or egregious" that she should be reluctant to return to work.
The Legal Services program argued that the store was an isolated, dangerous workplace. A VEC special examiner overturned the earlier rulings.
Another client, Billy Horne, quit his job at the Tazewell County Public Service Authority after both his vehicles conked out. It was a 60-mile round trip to work, and he claimed it would cost him money he didn't have - $800 for his car and $1,500 for his truck - to get them back on the road.
Horne knew he would lose his job if he couldn't get to work, so he quit rather than be fired.
Horne's unemployment claim was turned down twice, then approved, then rejected again at the VEC's top level.
The agency's final decision said Horne had not done enough to fix his cars. Horne said he couldn't get a loan because he had filed in bankruptcy court. The VEC said he failed to mention the names of banks where he had tried to get a loan, and that he could have asked for his vacation pay - $500 - to use for repairs.
According to the VEC, losing the vehicles shouldn't have been a problem, because the 60-mile drive "was not an usually long commuting distance."
Horne has taken his case to Tazewell Circuit Court; O'Donnell and the attorney general's office will argue it Feb.14.
O'Donnell, who figures he has taken as many as 400 unemployment cases, cannot predict what will happen. He has won some victories over the years, but he has lost more than his share.
"I've been here for 16 years, and I don't think I've accomplished anything," he said.
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