Plein v. Department of Labor6/12/2002
oner for other employment and, in fact, entered into that employment. Therefore, the [claimant] could not, at that time, have received unemployment benefits for the simple and inescapable reason that he was employed. That he subsequently becomes unemployed, and therefore eligible, because of the actions of the subsequent employer does not change the situation. The claimant's unemployment results from the subsequent employer's laying him off and not from the petitioner's actions. Rather, it was the claimant's inadvertent actions which led to his unemployment through the, perhaps very reasonable, acceptance of employment that supposedly paid better." Id. at 405, 758 A.2d at 134.
The appellant in this case was employed by Atlas Tile & Terrazzo as a tile setter's helper, a job that paid $9.00 an hour. He accepted employment with Home Depot, U.S.A., at its Ellicott City store, as a sales associate in the floor and wall department. That job paid $12.00 an hour with the prospect of receiving, after a waiting period, a health insurance plan and stock purchase options and, after one year, two weeks vacation and sick leave. The appellant left his employment with Atlas and began working at Home Depot on August 14, 2000. On September 27, 2000, he was laid off, unexpectedly and through no fault of his own. His application for unemployment benefits was denied on the authority of Total Audio-Visual.
This case demonstrates, the appellant submits, the devastating impact that Total Audio-Visual has had on workers, "especially the working poor striving to pull themselves out of poverty and better their conditions of employment," a conclusion with which the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation (hereinafter "DLLR"), the appellee, takes no issue. For that reason, he strenuously argues for the overturning of Total Audio-Visual. In support of that result, the appellant offers a number of arguments. Although, as the appellant points out, the claimant's perspective was not represented in Total Audio-Visual, the claimant in that case having chosen not to participate in the appeal, many of the arguments he offers are not new ones. In fact, DLLR, the appellee in that case and the purported appellee here, made many of them in its attempt to uphold the decision to award unemployment benefits to the Total Audio-Visual claimant.
DLLR argued unsuccessfully in Total Audio-Visual that unemployment benefits were properly awarded in that case precisely because a claimant who leaves a position for other employment with similar responsibilities and substantially better pay has left with good cause under § 8-1001; that the Board's interpretation of § 8-1001 was consistent with the plain language of the statute, its legislative history, and the remedial nature of the Unemployment Insurance Law; and, citing Paynter, supra, 303 Md. 22, 491 A.2d 1186, as well as cases from other jurisdictions, that the Board's decision was consistent with the standards set by this Court addressing the issue whether leaving one's job to accept better employment is a cause which would impel the average reasonable worker to leave his or her job. 360 Md. at 392, 758 A.2d at 127. Those arguments, repeated here by the appellant, are fortified by the claimant's perspective and perhaps more eloquently stated.
In addition, the appellant challenges the Court's use of § 8-611 (e) as support for its interpretation of § 8-1001, contending that the Court's statement of the scope of § 8-611 conflated two concepts, namely, "whether the period of employment with the [first employer] may be used to calculate the claimant's unemployment benefits" and "whether those benefits are chargeable to the [first employer]," Total Audio-Visual, 360
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