House committee hears bill to disqualify unemployment claimants who 'ghost' employers

The House Committee on Economic Competitiveness heard testimony Thursday on House Bill 4516, a bill from Representative Jason Wolford that would amend the Michigan Employment Security Act to create a rebuttable presumption that claimants are ineligible for unemployment insurance if they "ghost" a scheduled job interview or fail to show for work after accepting an offer.

The bill would direct the Unemployment Insurance Agency (UIA) to modify employer-facing systems (identified in testimony as MiWAM and its successor MyUI) to allow employers to report missed interviews or missed first days of work, and to give the agency authority to investigate and determine eligibility. Representative Wolford told the committee the measure includes a rebuttable presumption to let claimants present evidence — for example, childcare breakdowns or car problems — to defend against a disqualification.

Supporters told the committee the change is needed to protect the employer-funded UI trust fund and to strengthen accountability for claimants who they say use interviews to meet weekly work-search requirements while not intending to accept work. Opponents said the bill would create new administrative work for an agency already struggling with timeliness, risk cutting off benefits for workers with legitimate reasons for missing interviews, and is not clearly tied to the documented large-scale fraud identified in pandemic-era reviews.

Representative Jason Wolford, the bill sponsor, opened by saying the UI program is "100% employer funded" and should "be focused on helping people get back to employment." He described what he and employers call "ghosting": scheduling an interview or accepting a job and then failing to show up without…