268 A.D. 582 | N.Y. App. Div. | 1944
Claimant is the owner of 50% of the capital stock of a business corporation which wholly owns a summér resort hotel and its seventy acres of site in the Catskills. He also owns 25% of the capital stock of another corporation which operates the hotel during the resort season on lease from the owner at annual rental of $12,000. During the summer season claimant is employed as manager of the hotel and receives $2,200 for his services. His wife and children are then also employed there, the wife receiving $500 for her services. The hotel operates for about four months. It is closed the rest of the year. Claimant also receives $150 from the owner corpora
The evidence clearly establishes that in his status as an employee of his corporate enterprises claimant, is in fact a seasonal worker in an occupation of a seasonal nature. However, the provisions of the statute respecting seasonal workers may not bar his application since there is no evidence of determinations by the Commissioner requisite to put them in force. (Labor Law, formerly § 508, now § 595.)
While there is no express requirement in the statute of a dependence upon wages of employment'as a condition for the receipt of unemployment benefits, it is significant that “ economic insecurity ” is mentioned as the sine qua non for its enactment. Therein the declaration of public policy pronounces that it was “ involuntary unemployment,” which, having become a subject of general interest and concern, called the statute forth in order “ to prevent its spread and to lighten its burden which now so often falls with crushing force upon the unemployed worker and his family ”; and that, it was considered that the statutory plan of compulsory unemployment insurance could better solve the problem than as “ now handled by the barren actualities of poor relief assistance backed by compulsory contribution through taxation.” To attain this end for “ the public good and the well-being of the wage earners ” the statutory machinery was set up “ for the compulsory setting aside of financial reserves for the benefit of persons unemployed through no fault of their own.” (Labor Law, formerly § 500, now § 501.)
From what is shown as to claimant’s ownership, influence in, and connection with his aforesaid corporate enterprises, during the past thirteen years, it is at least fairly inferable that such was the cause of his seasonal employment. Thus there
All concur.
Decision affirmed, with costs to the Industrial Commissioner.