Unemployment Insurance Benefit Extended: Rep. Wheeler

OSWEGO, IL — Assistant House Minority Leader Keith Wheeler (R-Oswego) negotiated a bill — aimed at protecting essential workers during the pandemic — on behalf of the Republicans during a whirlwind four-day emergency session of the General Assembly in Springfield last month.

On Friday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the bipartisan bill into law that deals with coronavirus-related workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance changes.

"One area of Illinois law that needed to be updated immediately was the health coverage and compensation structure for persons who get COVID-19 while doing front-line, essential work for their neighbors," Wheeler said. "This new law represents the good that comes from Democrats and Republicans truly working together to solve problems that impact people’s lives in real time."

House Bill 2455, passed by the House of Representatives on May 22 by a vote of 113-2, extends unemployment insurance benefits for 20 weeks and brings the state in line for accepting $2.2 billion from the federal government for the unemployment insurance trust fund.

The bipartisan bill also contains help including expanded unemployment benefits for out-of-work Illinoisans. Upfront, during the duration of the pandemic, newly jobless people are no longer required to wait a week before collecting benefits. At the back end, persons made unemployed due to COVID-19 will have the right to collect up to 13 weeks of additional jobless benefits as they search for new employment.

After the General Assembly had approved the budget during the same session, Wheeler said in a statement that millions of families are suffering hardships due to the COVID-19 outbreak, and yet "Democrats are leaving town without speeding up the process to reopen our economy safely, fixing the broken unemployment system that remains plagued with problems for Illinoisans who need to file for benefits, or providing any meaningful property tax relief."

"While there was an encouraging degree of bipartisan cooperation during the special session when it came to ensuring funding for our hospitals and a business-labor agreement on workers’ compensation and unemployment issues related to COVID-19, when it came time to pass a budget, majority Democrats dug in their heels and shut us out of the final product," Wheeler stated. "Their budget spends roughly $42.8 billion even though the state only expects to bring in a little under $36.8 billion, $5 billion of which comes from additional borrowing. This is reckless and irresponsible."

As per this bill first responders and their families are among those covered by the protections in the new law. They will be able to appeal to what is called a rebuttable presumption — which requires hard evidence to overturn — that any case of COVID-19 they catch was contracted on the job.

The unemployment insurance trust fund is being depleted due to the unprecedented increase in unemployment claims since mid-March, Wheeler said.

"To protect employers from massive increases in UI rates, House Bill 2455 provides for the non charging of employers with respect to employment experience factors resulting from layoffs forced by the COVID-19 from March 15 through December 31."

Rep. Wheeler serves the 50th District, which includes portions of Aurora, Batavia, Geneva, Campton Hills, Elburn, Montgomery, Oswego, Plano, St. Charles, Sugar Grove and Yorkville.