OPINION BY
In this сonsolidated case, Port Authority of Allegheny County (Employer) petitions for review of orders of the Unemployment Compensation Board of Review (Board) affirming the decisions of an Unemployment Compensation Referee (Referee), which affirmed the determinations of the Unemployment Compensation Service Center (Service Center) granting benefits to Edward Bak (Bak), Wayne Tоdd (Todd), Carol Bertram (Bertram), and Or-est Horhut (Horhut) (collectively, Claimants). Employer argues that, because Claimants voluntarily retired prior to continuing to work under its Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP), they are not eligible for benefits under Section 402(b) of the Unemployment Compensation Law (Law). 1
Following a consolidated hearing, the Referee made the following findings of fact with respect to Bertram:
2. The employer has a program called Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP), which employees who were over retirement age and not represented by a collective bargaining unit during the period beginning June 1, 2002 and ending May 31, 2003 could choose to participate, provided that they elected participation during this one-year enrollment period.
3. The employee must file an application and if approved must retire within five years of the application date.
4. As a condition of this application, the applicants were required to enter into an Irrevocable Election and Agreement to Participate under which the participant elected a precise length of requested DROP period in whole years.
5. During the period of the claimant’s participation in the DROP program, neither the employer nor the employee contributed to the employer’s pension, and the employee’s pension amount no longer increases.
6. Monthly pension credits, in the amount of pension payment the employee would be entitled to, were made to a special account for the employee bearing interest.
7. Upon retirement separation from the DROP program, the employee is *1072 entitled to a lump sum payment of the amount credited to the special account with interest.
8. The provisions governing the rights and obligations of the parties under the Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP) were clarified in Section 24-Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP) of the Port Authority of Allegheny Retirement and Disability Allowance Plan for Employees Not Represented by a Union as amended and restated effective as of January 1, 2007 and remained unchanged from their original adoption. (Be 17602.1; 020542110586 J102680.2).
9. On January 2, 2003, the claimant applied for participation in the DROP program executing the required documents from the Port Authority.
10. The Port Authority of Allegheny County required execution of two forms constituting agreements.
11. The Port Authority required a Retirement Notification Form whereby the claimant elected to retire voluntarily from the Port Authority effective February 1, 2003.
12. The Port Authority required execution of a form agreement of “Irrevocable Election and Agreement to Participate in the Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP)” in which the claimant was required to establish [his or her] effectivе date of DROP entry by month and year and required to elect [his or her] length of DROP period in “whole years; maximum 5”.
13. The claimant designated her effective DROP entry date of February 2003 and length of DROP period as 5 years.
14. The claimant received a financial gain by entering the program.
15. The claimant was not in imminent danger of being laid off at the time she entered the program.
16. The claimant knew she would be rеquired to retire at the end of the 5-year election period, which would run its course on January 31, 2008.
17. The claimant’s application for job participation was approved and claimant was accepted into the DROP program.
18. Continuing work was available for the claimant at the time of her election into this program had she not retired.
19. The claimant complied with the requirements of the DROP program and intended to remain employed through the anniversary date of January 31, 2008 in accordance with her “Irrevocable Election and Agreement to Participate” in this program.
20. On March 30, 2007, by resolution, the Port Authority of Allegheny County amended Section 24 of the Plan as follows:
6. The applicable provisions of Section 24 are amended to reflect that DROP pаrticipants may remain active employees for no more than five years but under no circumstances may remain active employees after July 1, 2007;
21. The claimant’s participation in the DROP program was ended after July 1, 2007 pursuant to this resolution and no further work was available or offered to the claimant with the Port Authority after that date.
22. The claimant executed the required Port Authority of Allegheny County DROP Separation from Service Retirement Notification form under protest.
23. The claimant would not have left employment or participated in the *1073 DROP program except for the Port Authority’s decision to terminate the DROP program through its March 30, 2007 resolution.
24. The employer adopted its March 30, 2007 resolution for business reasons.
25. The claimant is able and available for suitable work.
26. No alternative offer of work was made to the claimant.
(Referee’s Decision, Findings of Fact (FOF) ¶¶ 2-26, September 18, 2007, Appeal No. 07-09-H-5682.) The Referee made substantially similar findings with respect to the other Claimants as well. 2 The Referee reasoned that, for purposes of Section 402(b), a resignation is generally not effective until the effective date stated in the resignation. The Referee construed the elected separation dates selected by Claimants to be the effective dates proclaimed by their resignations, and found that Employer’s discharge of Claimants prior to these dates, therefore, constituted involuntary terminations. The Referee held that Claimants were eligible for benefits. Employer appealed the Referee’s decisions to the Board, which adopted the Referee’s findings of fact and conclusions of law. Employer now petitions this Court for review. 3
On appeal, Employer argues that: (1) the Board should have analyzed Claimants’ cases as voluntary quit cases under Section 402(b) of the Law, rather than as discharge cases under Section 402(e), because Claimants voluntarily quit their employment when they elected to participate in the DROP program; (2) Claimants did not have necessitous and compelling reasons to retire; (3) the Board’s finding that the requested DROP periods were irrevocable was not supported by substantial evidence; and (4) the Board erred in granting benefits because Claimants’ unemployment is not the type of harm which the Legislature intended the Law to ameliorate. 4
We first address Employer’s argument that the Board erred in determining that Employer discharged Claimants. Employer contends that Claimants voluntarily quit their employment when they elected to participate in the DROP program. The lynchpin of this argument, as of most of the arguments Employer advances in this appeal, is that Claimants voluntarily quit their employment when they elected to participate in the DROP program and executed Retirement Notification Forms. In support of this proposition, Employer relies on this Court’s decision in
Davila v. Unemployment Compensation Board of Review,
Section 402(b) of the Law states that an employee will not be eligible for unemployment compensation benefits for weeks in which the employee is unemployed because he left work “without cause of a necessitous and compelling nature.” 43 P.S. § 802(b). Whether a claimant voluntarily quit his employment or whether his employer discharged him is a question of law for this Court “to determine from the totality of the record.”
Bell v. Unemployment Compensation Board of Review,
*1075 Employer repeatedly stresses that Claimants chose to participate in the DROP program, that Employer reserved the right to alter the terms of the DROP program at any time, and that Employer, therefore, had “the option of cutting off any retiree’s participation in the DROP program” at any time. (Employer’s Br. at 22.) Employer also stresses that the effective dates of Claimants’ resignations were prior to or contemporaneous with their entry into the DROP program. Essentially, Employer argues that becаuse Claimants’ resignations purported to be effective as of their participation in the DROP program, and because the terms of the DROP program were subject to Employer’s unilateral change, Claimants were agreeing to voluntarily quit whenever Employer told them to stop working. This confuses the question of whether an employee is an at-will employee with the question of whether а claimant may receive unemployment compensation benefits. Claimants’ resignations and participation in the DROP program may have been sufficient to give Employer the right to discharge them at any time for collective bargaining, pension, or contractual purposes. However, such resignations and participation were not sufficient to waive their right to unemploymеnt compensation. 6 Indeed, we note that under Section 701 of the Law, 43 P.S. § 861, employees cannot agree to waive their unemployment compensation benefits.
Were we to accept Employer’s argument, well-counseled employers would simply ask each new hire to resign effective his first day of work and select a period during which he requested to continue work. Employer could then keep the employee at its leisure, until it unilaterally decided it no longer wished to employ him, at which point it would “retire” him, and such “retirement” would be considered a voluntary quit. Such a scheme subverts the intention of the Law. Although Claimants tendered resignations, which purported to be effective as of February 2003, Employer invited them to request a period during which they would continue tо work, and Employer then continued to employ Claimants during this selected period, after the purported effective date of Claimants’ resignations. Under these facts, it is clear that Claimants’ resignations were to be effective at the end of their DROP periods. Therefore, pursuant to Amado and PECO, the Board did not err in determining that, during the time prior to the expiration of their DROP periods, Claimants’ unemployment should be considered involuntary, and analyzed under Section 402(e). 7
We next address Employer’s argument that the Board’s finding of fact that the DROP periods elected by Claimants were irrevocable is not supported by substantial evidence. We begin by noting that, in her enumerated findings of fact, which were adopted by the Board, the Referee made no such determination. In its discussion adopting the Referee’s findings of fact and conclusions of law, the Board did state that “[t]he claimant elected a DROP period of five years and, despite the irrevocable nature of the DROP period, the employer unilaterally altered the elected DROP period.” (Board Op. at 1.) Regardless, however, as discussed above, the issue in this case is not whether Employer had the right to discharge Claimants, which right employers usually do have, but whether *1076 Claimants are eligible for unemployment compеnsation. As discussed above, this Court’s interpretation of the issue is that by resigning and entering into the DROP program, Claimants voluntarily quit effective the end of the DROP period, for purposes of unemployment compensation.
Lastly, we address Employer’s argument that Claimants’ unemployment is not the type of harm which the Legislature intended the Law to ameliorate and that the Board, therefore, erred in granting benefits. Employer’s first contention in this regard is that, because Claimants voluntarily participated in the DROP program and benefited monetarily from their participation, they are not unemployed through no fault of their own as intended by Section 3 of the Law, 43 P.S. § 752. Section 3 states in part that:
The Legislature ... declares that in its considered judgment the public good and the general welfare of the сitizens of this Commonwealth require the exercise of the police powers of the Commonwealth in the enactment of this act for the compulsory setting aside of unemployment reserves to be used for the benefit of persons unemployed through no 'fault of their own.
43 P.S. § 752. Employer argues that this Court has applied Section 3 substantively in other cases such as
Frank v. Unemployment Compensation Board of Review,
Employer next asserts that the Law is intended to protect against economic hardship and, because Claimants received lump sums upon their discharge as a result of their participation in the DROP program, they are not subject to economic hardship and should be denied benefits. Employer cites
Unemployment Compensation Board of Review v. Molitoris,
For these reasons, we affirm the order of the Board.
ORDER
NOW, September 4, 2008, the orders of the Unemployment Compensation Board of Review in the above-captioned matters are hereby AFFIRMED insofar as they grant unemployment compensation benefits for the period between each employee’s discharge and that time when he or she would have been unemployed due to the elapse of his or her elected DROP period.
Notes
. Act of December 5, 1936, Second Ex. Sess., P.L. (1937) 2897, as amended, 43 P.S. § 802(b).
.The Referee's decision in Bertram's case states:
On September 12, 2007, the Referee conducted a consolidated hearing [in Claimants’ cases]. The hearing was a joint hearing in accordance with Section 505 [of the Law] and 34 Pa. [Code] § 101.22 with a single record where testimony and evidence introduced as one appeal was considered introduced with resрect to all. These cases were consolidated as they involved the same or substantially the same issues and a single record of the proceedings was made.
(Referee's Decision at 3.)
. In reviewing the decisions of the Board, this Court is limited to determining whether the Board committed an error of law, violated constitutional rights, or made findings of fact unsupported by substantial evidence.
Brunswick Hotel & Conference Center v. Unemployment Compensation Board of Review,
. For clarity of analysis we have reordered Employer’s arguments.
. Employer argues that Amado and PECO are distinguishable because, in those cases, the employer and the claimants involved agreed to a specific end date for the employment before the employer unilaterally discharged the claimant, whereas here, Claimants merely requested a DROP period. Even assuming Employer's characterization of the current case to be accurate, there is no indication in the Amado case that the employer there acquiesced to the effective date of the claimant’s resignation.
. We do note, however, that had Claimants worked until the end of their DROP periods, we would consider them to have voluntarily quit, as in Davila.
. Due to our holding on this issue, we do not reach Employer's argument that Claimants did not have necessitous and compelling cause to quit their jobs.