Opinion
December 29, 1961
Appeal by the claimant from a decision of the Workmen's Compensation Board finding claimant ineligible for disability benefits on the ground that her employment had terminated more than four weeks prior to the commencement of disability (Workmen's Compensation Law, § 203). The facts in this case are undisputed. Respondent employer, engaged in the production of dresses, employed claimant in 1953. It is customary for a slack period to develop in the employer's production each year usually in June. During this period the employer would temporarily lay off its employees, including claimant, subject to recall when the slack season had ended. Such a period occurred in June of 1957 and claimant was informed that she would be off from June 7, 1957 to July 7, 1957. As she had done in the past, when such temporary layoffs occurred, claimant applied for and received unemployment insurance benefits. Claimant's husband, employed by a different employer, received his annual three-week vacation commencing July 1, 1957. Claimant desiring to accompany her husband on his vacation, as she had in previous years, requested and received a three-week leave of absence from her employer. As soon as claimant obtained the leave of absence she notified her local unemployment insurance office of her intentions to go on vacation, and accordingly she no longer received unemployment benefits. On July 22, 1957 as she was about to return to work she was disabled as a result of an accident while on a subway train and was unable to return to work until October 7, 1957. Since October 7, 1957 claimant has continued in the same employment and has each year gone through the same June layoff-July vacation sequence. The board held that since "disability commenced more than four weeks following termination of employment on June 10, 1957 and that claimant was not claiming unemployment insurance benefits at the time of the onset of the disability" (Workmen's Compensation Law, §§ 203, 207), claimant was not entitled to compensation. Since claimant was not receiving unemployment benefits and the statutory time period does not here apply, the sole question is whether claimant remained "in employment" during her layoff and subsequent vacation. We believe that she did. In Matter of Flo v. General Elec. Co. ( 7 N.Y.2d 96, 100) which we consider here controlling, claimant was required, under company rules, to stop work in her seventh month of pregnancy and to remain away from work at least eight weeks following the birth of her child. During the eight-week period following birth claimant was disabled. The Court of Appeals after pointing out the broad social coverage contemplated by the Disability Benefits Law found that claimant had continued "in employment" stating: "When read in context and in light of the whole statutory scheme, it seems clear beyond any doubt that, when the Legislature employed the term `in employment', they meant the relationship commonly understood as existing between the employer and employee and intended that it should continue unless and until severed. Here, as we have said, there was no severance of that relationship. The parties having recognized continuance of the employment relationship for all other purposes, it seems patently unreal and contrary to the spirit and obvious intent of the statute to say that, for the purposes of disability, the performance of actual work must be continuous. In fact, when the Legislature used the term `every such employee shall continue to be eligible during such employment', they negated any such result (§ 203). Nowhere does the statute use words or language limiting disability benefits to disabilities occurring within the time limitations calculated from the last day the claimant actually performed work; nor may such limitation reasonably be read into the term `in employment'." In the instant case it is manifest that it was the intent of the parties that the employment relationship continued during the layoff and the vacation. Union rules would have prevented the employer from denying claimant her job after these arranged absences. The fact that claimant sought and received unemployment benefits and in so doing represented her availability for temporary employment would not destroy her relationship with the employer which had continued over the years both prior to and since the incident here involved. Decision reversed on the law and the case remitted to the board for further determination not inconsistent herewith, with costs. Bergan, P.J., Coon, Gibson, Reynolds and Taylor, JJ., concur.