Total and Partial Unemployment TPU 80.1
Alternate or Staggered Work Periods
A. Partial Employment
A claimant who is placed on an alternate work week schedule by his employer due to slack business conditions may remain in partial claim status so long as he continues to be available for full-time work, desires full-time work, and is willing to accept other employment while he is not working for his regular employer.
Section 1252-1 of Title 22 defines a partially unemployed individual as follows:
"(c) ’Partially unemployed individual’ means a person who during a week meets all of the following conditions:
(1) He or she was employed by a regular employer.
(2) He or she worked less than his or her normal customary full-time hours for his or her regular employer because of lack of full-time work.
(3) He or she was continuously attached to his or her employer from the standpoint that there did not occur any severance of the employer-employee relationship."
B. Alternate Work Periods
In Benefit Decision 6407, the Board considered the case of a claimant whose hours were reduced by his employer from 40 hours each week to 40 hours each alternate week. The Board held that the claimant was entitled to benefits as a partially unemployed individual since he met all of the criteria set forth in the Title 22 regulations. The Board said:
"Here the claimant had worked forty hours each week for fourteen years. He had been reduced to working forty hours each alternate week because of business conditions. He desires to return to full-time employment at the earliest opportunity. In our opinion, the claimant has not established a pattern of normal customary full-time employment of working alternate weeks. Accordingly, we find that the claimant does qualify as a partially unemployed individual . . ."