Workplace Mythologies and Unemployment Insurance: Exit, Voice and Exhausting All Reasonable Alternatives to Quitting

Abstract

This article argues that the requirement that workers exhaust alternatives to quitting in order to qualify for unemployment benefits is misguided. The requirement is premised on inaccurate assumptions about the world of work and the situation of employees. Albert Hirschman's Exit, Voice and Loyalty provides a theoretical framework for thinking about decisions to stay or leave in the economic and political realms. The exhaustion requirement is premised on a vision of employment as more like a political community than an economic marketplace. While this vision may be an attractive aspiration, it has little foundation in most twenty-first century workplaces.

Keywords: unemployment insurance, compensation, benefits, exhaustion requirement, Hirschman, exit, voice, work, employment