Employers may apply for the Voluntary Shared Work Program which permits employers to seek an alternative to layoffs — retaining their trained employees by reducing their hours and wages that can be partially offset with unemployment insurance benefits. Employees who remain employed, even part time, under this program, would not be required to exhaust paid time off before qualifying for unemployment benefits.
(Updated March 25, 2020)
For more information, please see PTO and Unemployment Benefits and my prior article, Options for Avoiding Total Layoffs.
