I had an employee who quit his job to take a job that was more highly paid (cement truck driver). So a few months after he started that job, they laid him off for the winter. He made a claim for unemployment, and now they've send me a bill for thousands. Do I seriously have to pay after someone quit their job and then got laid off by their next employer? I know I should call the dept. of labor but tbh I usually lose my rag when trying to get clear answers out of government employees, lol.

Could they have possibly sent the bill to the wrong employer? (they may have meant to send it to the construction company, but instead sent it to you?)  

Well, it's got my name on it along with info about when he worked for me and how much he made.

hrrrmmm... of course I'm no American but wouldn't the employer portion of unemployment benefit contributions be the type of thing you pay DURING the employees tenure based on their hours/wage? Not after they apply for bennies?
 
This sounds hinkey. If you unwittingly didn't pay into it perhaps by them making their claim you are in for a world of hurt (or at least annoyance) due to the government now being aware of you being an employer.
 
From what I know of your business though I'm guessing you should tell these people they are sub contractors who have to deal with their own taxes/bennies/etc.
 
You'd better call someone (preferably a lawyer or accountant) to sort this out before phoning up the gov.
 
Again... I am totally not an American, nor an accountant and anytime I had people working under me it was as subcontractors or my superiors handled all that crap.
 
I would be VERY careful about what I did if I got something like that in the mail.
 
Good luck.

Yeah everything is above board, they're all legal employees on a payroll and I pay worker's comp, disability, UI etc. You would think that this covered any later claim they make but nooooo.....they sting you for thousands more. One thing you learn about being in business is that the government is NOT on your team (even though you're driving the economy along, creating jobs etc). It sucks.

Again... not american, but if you've already paid your employer portion (and it's up to date) I don't see how they can send a bill just because someone made a poor life decision.
 
If that's how it works in NYC and the bill is substantial enough to go through the hassle I would make sure it's known that the employee HAD gainful employment with you then gave it up (as in they were NOT laid off) to go do less stable seasonal work.
 
It sounds like maybe they fudged their UI application and claimed you laid them off.
 
Seriously this is a job for an accountant or lawyer with labor law experience.
 
Also... at this point I would recommend totally deleting all your comments here in case it turns into a court thing. If you do I'll follow suit and delete mine.
 
Cheers.

I'm not American either, but from the sounds of it you need to talk to someone with expertise in the relevant law. Going off legal advice on forums,  any forum, is always risky. As a barrister I know puts it, "all too often, a legal opinion found on an internet forum is, with the exception of a few specialist forums, worth far less than what you paid for it."

sharke
Well, it's got my name on it along with info about when he worked for me and how much he made.

Oh.....I was thinking they "accidentally" put your name/info on the claim instead of the construction company...... (the current Gov. is very efficient at these type of things you know......)  

@tlw... Indeed and really, when I'm trying to sort out government crap like this I scour the relevant government sites (like the official ones) to dig up as much info as I can. Even if it's a bunch of barely intelligible legalese garbledygook I can usually glean a little more about what I'm dealing with. As annoying and time consuming as that is it makes it so when I DO actually call one of the phone drones I can spew out direct quotes, reference article numbers and generally point them to what I'm referring to or at the very least annoy them enough they put me through to someone who actually DOES know something.

To be honest I don't think there's much harm in having a generalized discussion about it here as long as no names/specifics are mentioned. And while I'd never act on advice from a forum, I know I'm going to have to call the Dept. of Labor at some point so I though it might be useful to maybe get a ballpark idea of how things work so that I can understand their gobbledegook better. I cannot stress enough how frustrating it is to call any government agency in this city. They seem to put the sassiest, most unhelpful and obtuse people on the phones and they really do have this attitude that as an employer, you're the enemy.

It's weird but in all the years I've been in business, nobody's ever made a claim like this before. And you do wonder why in the hell you pay so much in UI contributions every payroll when they ask you to pay the employees fricken dole money anyway.

I never have much luck working out what's what from official government websites. They seem to go out of their way to make everything as confusing, ambiguous and downright unintelligible as possible. Oh well, thanks for the comments everyone, guess I just have to roll my sleeves up take a deep breath and call the douchenozzles....