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 Marion Paige (Admin) posted on Friday, September 29, 2000 - 11:36 am
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An excellent program in theory, but a waste of time in practice.
Back in 1993 when Congress was first deliberating on revising the unemployment system in association with what latter became the Workforce Investment Act of 1999, it was noted that allowing certain people to collect unemployment while starting a new business was one very effective way of getting people off of unemployment for good.
The SEP program provides leads, contacts and resources to help you start your own business and you are allowed to collect unemployment for a year while getting your business started.
In practice, the guy running the SEP program in New York sits at his desk in Albany and has this idiot computer program that he uses to decide who is eligible for the program. The application procedure involves you calling to some answering machine and inputing certain information, this guy then uses his idiot computer program to compute a percentage for you. The computer program assigns a number to you, without anyone ever talking to you, discussing what you want to do and without anyone knowing how long you have been unemployed or displaced from a high paying job.
I actually got this guy to admit in sworn testimony that the number his idiot computer program assigns you would be the same number if you are unemployed for 3 weeks as it would be if you are unemployed for 13 weeks. In other words, the program has no way of considering how long you have been unemployed or how long you may have been displaced from a higher paying profession (which like was the whole reason for Congress creating the program in the first place).
This guy in Albany looks at the printout from his idiot computer program and if your number is less than say 75% he sends you a letter rejecting you for the SEP program.
I currently have a lawsuit in state court seeking permission to go to this guy's office in Albany and smash his idiot computer program into microsopic bits and pieces. But until I win, you can more or less count on being rejected for the SEP program.
From my investigation of the matter, I think that the only people who can actually qualify for the program are people who may have left the workforce (say on pregnancy leave) and are trying to get back into working by starting a business.
The program was intended for displaced workers who may be working in jobs that provide significantly lower incomes than the jobs they were displaced from, but there is almost no chance in hell that these kind of people will be able to take advantge of the SEP under the current system in New York. |
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