Can a prn employee collect unemployment?

[littlebit3]

Greetings, everyone!

I am contracted out from my local hospital to work at my local school as the nurse, and am considered prn. When the school closes for the winter holidays(4 weeks), am I eligible to file unemployment?

Thanks for your time and answers

[shiccy]

In my state (and it could have changed since I last knew) but you had two options as a TEACHER. Compensation could be monthly and spread out - ie- when it was winter/summer breaks you got the same amount of pay as other pay periods. You also have the option of getting paid for the time worked (salary-wise) and when school was not in session, you would not get a pay check. AFAIK benefits were still collected in either case as it looks poorly upon a person with insurance if you are on-again off-again with your coverage, so that would rarely happen and would just come out of the paychecks in one way or the other.

This paired with the fact that you're PRN, and the fact that you have no finite income, necessarily, I would venture to say that you would NOT be able to collect, but only HR/your state would be able to direct you further as this is something that can vary.

[cabanaboy]

I know for a fact that the cafeteria workers at this school collect unemployment over the holidays. It is a scheduled break for them too. Why then, would they be eligible and not me?

I hope you are confused and that they are continuing to get paid by the school. If they are getting state unemployment benefits for missing work that never existed (winter break) then something is really wrong.

[llg, PhD, RN]

As others have said, this is a legal question, not a nursing one -- and you will have to talk with the unemployment office in your state. You may also want to talk to an attorney that specializes in such matters.

I do know that this is a general area of the unemployment regulations that is not totally clear and consistent. There is a movement among adjunct faculty members at universities to get their periods of unemployment covered by unemployment compensation. Adjuncts are similar to PRN employees in that they are "hired" by a university, but only assigned to teach on a course-by-course basis. Sometimes the school has a course for them to teach: some semesters they don't.

Anyway... the adjunct faculty members pursuing unemployment compensation for those semesters when they have no work are getting mixed results. Some are getting the compensation: some are not.

It seems to me that you are in a similarly "un-clear" situation with regards to the eligibility requrirments and will need to work with experts on the unemployment system to sort it out.

Good luck to you.