***Disclaimer***
This is my PERSONAL understanding of the new regulation. I am not an Unemployment expert or lawyer!!
There's a new Federal Unemployment regulation that the Bush administration kicked us in the butt with, on their way out the door.
The new regulation concerns Combined Wage Claims (CWC), the type of claim you make if you have worked in more than one state, but don't have enough employment in only one of them to make a claim.
In the past you could open this type of claim in your home state (based on the rates and rules of your home state) if you'd worked in two other states, without any employment in your home state.
Now you must open the claim in one of the states in which you worked (if you had no employment in your home state) which may cause you to lose money if that state pays a lower rate, or lose weeks if that state uses a different quarter system. It's even worse for us New Yorkers who can still get a wage determination based on weeks of work rather than quarters.
On top of that, the applicant is responsible for researching Unemployment laws in all the states in which s/he worked, prior making the choice of which state to use for the claim. And those websites are NOT easy to navigate!!
Much, much more cumbersome than the old method, and likely to cause additional financial problems for many theatre folk and other artists.