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Health & Fitness

Joyce, Senate Colleagues Pass Unemployment Reform

BOSTON – Senator Brian A. Joyce and his colleagues in the Massachusetts Senate have passed legislation making changes to Massachusetts’ unemployment system which will stabilize or drop unemployment insurance rates for businesses with consistent workforces, freeze those rates for four years, and maintain protections for unemployed workers.

“Making the system fairer to employers is long overdue,” said Joyce. “With these reforms, we will have a system that will not penalize employers who are hiring, training, and retaining employees and that will provide a stable rate system that will allow job providers to budget and grow more efficiently.”

The tweaked experience rating tables will shift the burden of supporting unemployed workers to businesses with high turnover and lessen the impact on businesses providing a stable workforce. Under the new rates, the most stable employers would pay $153 per employee per year, while the worst-rated companies would pay $2,337 per employee annually. It will also freeze rates through 2017, providing businesses with stable accounting and averting a potential 33 percent hike.

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