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GUEST COLUMN |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
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CONTACT: Jay Purdy |
State Rep. Thomas
Caltagirone |
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Pennsylvania seniors now entitled to full unemployment benefits
By state Rep. Thomas Caltagirone, D-Berks
As baby boomers in Pennsylvania enter their senior years, and as many of Pennsylvania’s current senior citizens live longer and stay increasingly active, the rate of working senior citizens in Berks County and elsewhere in the state has increased.
While many working seniors are on the job simply because they want to stay actively employed, there are far more who are working because they have to – they don’t have pension benefits from their previous employer, health-care costs have skyrocketed, they face rising energy bills, or they are burdened with other unanticipated expenses.
Most seniors look forward to retirement, but some find they do not have the financial security to maintain their quality of life when they retire. As a result, senior citizens are returning to work in record numbers just to make ends meet.
Unfortunately, many of our seniors who went back to work before 2006 found out that they were prohibited from collecting full unemployment compensation benefits if they were laid off. That’s because Pennsylvania was offsetting unemployment benefits for senior citizens by 50 percent of the weekly income they received from their Social Security or federal railroad retirement income.
That outdated policy was unfair to seniors, and both Democrats and Republicans in the General Assembly worked hard to pass legislation to change it. In December 2005, Gov. Ed Rendell signed Act 80 of 2005, which prohibits the state from offsetting unemployment benefits for seniors by any amount they receive from Social Security or railroad pensions.
For some laid-off seniors, the old law slashed unemployment checks by as much as 90 percent, and left them with hardly enough money to cover any of the expenses that had caused them to go back to work in the first place.
The Fairness for Working Seniors Act successfully changed that, and delivered on the promise that I and other legislators had made to our seniors that they would be treated fairly when they went back to work. Our efforts, along with those of AARP, the AFL-CIO and the thousands of seniors who helped push for this legislation, have helped to ensure that from now on, working seniors in Pennsylvania will be able to collect every dollar of the benefits they earn while on the job.
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