That's just how it works. It's not how it's written, and it's not how it's supposed to work, but it's how it works.

36% won. So 2/3rds of the time (read: most of the time), employee wins.

By all means, still appeal. But odds are not fantastic. Plan on having to pay out some unemployment that you shouldn't have to. A written employee handbook and records showing when policies were violated will save you some money sometimes, but don't count on it. You can fire employees, for cause, and still see your insurance go up, even with an appeal.

Like you said, these are appeals - not initial claims. That means they're cases in which the court has already reviewed the fairly clear-cut criteria for awarding benefits, determined that they are justified, and has proceed accordingly. Indeed, a court that reverses itself 36% of the time seems remarkably open to appeal by employers.

As far as the 64% of appeals that are rejected are concerned, it IS flat out wrong to say that these are all justified dismissals that they employer had to pay for anyway. After all, this figure also includes cases where employees quit for cause (e.g. flagrantly abusive work environments, failure to pay wages in full and on time, efforts to avoid paying unemployment claims by radically demoting or cutting hours instead of laying off, etc.), as well as cases in which the termination was wrongful, and likely to do lasting damage to the employee (e.g. by way of demonstrably slanderous performance reviews, for refusing to engage in abusive or deceptive practices on behalf of the employer, etc.)

You're also disregarding the way incentives function here. Since the employer is on the hook for damages - and the cost of an appeal is trivial - they have a strong incentive to fight, even in cases where they are monstrously in the wrong. Indeed, HR people will tell you that they automatically appealing everything, no matter what, as a matter of standard operating procedure. The idea is that by developing a reputation for reflexive fighting, they can use the notoriously slow pace of justice to delay payments for the better part of a year. Accordingly, people with limited savings who simply want to get the hell out of a truly unbearable situation can't count on unemployment insurance to finance their job search. Instead, they have to line up their next job before they quit their current one, rendering the question of unemployment moot.

If you are fired "with cause" (i.e. you did something wrong) you aren't eligible for unemployment. If you quit you are not eligible for unemployment. Only if you are fired "without cause" are you eligible for unemployment payments.

Let's be careful about this. It depends on the reason you quit. If you were being harassed and the company did nothing about it, or you had unsafe working conditions, etc, you can still collect.

It's better to say that if you quit for reasons that have nothing to do with the employer, you cannot collect unemployment.

I had a co-worker who quit because the raise he was promised (in writing) at hiring time never materialized. The company had to pay unemployment while he looked for work.

I understand that no-one likes to do the business-overhead side of things in small businesses. But either the costs of paying (undue) unemployment aren't that big of a problem, or the employer has no-one to blame but themselves for not documenting cause.

If you have an equivalent recipe for a marginally performing software developer that doesn't cost more to implement than just paying the unemployment : I'd love to hear it.

Also consider team morale. Waiting for several phases of failure to "document" your case is a great way to lose your top performers and lose a customer. I think it's less expensive just to fire -- ideally /w severance in exchange for unemployment, if your state permits it.

Yes and no. The basics are the same: you need to document responsibilities, goals and performance. Document performance that doesn't meet the goals. Document some sort of plan by which you try to help the underperforming employee meet their goals and then document their continuing performance.

Is it potentially cheaper to just pay a modest severance or unemployment insurance? Quite possibly.

But documenting performance is not voodoo and the fact that just paying a modest severance or unemployment is cheaper than documenting performance rather undercuts the assertion that unemployment costs are onerous.

Not everyone is a self-starter or "rockstar". Failing to document clear responsibilities and goals and then measure performance against those goals shortchanges you and them.

This may be an unpopular sentiment around HN circles, but just expecting every employee to "get it" and not having a consistent process to deal with underperformance (which can have many different and often addressable causes) is a crappy way to treat employees in my view.