My question involves unemployment benefits for the state of: Illinois
My wife recently had one of those wonderful job evaluation meetings. She has been working with her employer for three years in the mental health field, and had been hearing rumblings of possible upcoming cuts. Although she works hard and does everything that is asked of her, she dislikes working there, and while she absolutely doesn't want to lose her job, she viewed a layoff as not an entirely bad thing as it would give her time to collect unemployment while she studied for her licensing certification exam.
She was told in this meeting that "they were having a hard time justifying her job being a full-time position". This was an outcome that she had not considered. Basically, the company does not want to pay unemployment, so they're going to reduce her hours to the point that she will quit and be uneligable.
Is this even legal? You have to think that if it was, what's to stop any company that doesn't want to pay unemployment to, as an alternative to laying off, cut the employee's hours down to say, one hour a week, and put them in a position where they have to quit?

