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Courtesy of the Rhode Island Department of Labor

“For us, it was all about keeping our current employees,” said Jim Moon, president of Moon Associates, a Woonsocket company that markets and installs the Gutter Helmet gutter protection system and a line of replacement windows called Renewal by Anderson Windows and Doors.

Last year, Moon said, his company, with about 65 employees, had expanded its business by becoming an Anderson window dealer. But that meant an extensive period of reorganization and training before any windows could be sold, a period that left some of his employees without enough work to do.

“In a perfect world, everything happens on a Monday,” Moon said. “In the real world, it takes a lot longer. As it turned out, for a while we didn’t have enough work to keep everyone busy.” The “prudent” thing to do, Moon said, was to temporarily lay off some people.

But he didn’t have to, thanks to a WorkShare program operated by the state Department of Labor and Training. Under the program, companies can avoid layoffs by reducing hours, either for all its employees or for those in a particular department. The employees make up for most of the lost income by receiving a portion of their unemployment benefits, while still keeping their jobs and benefits, such as health care, retirement contributions and vacation. Employers get to hang onto their work force.

WorkShare is designed to avert temporary layoffs, which the state defines as lasting at least two months but less than six months. The Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training estimates that WorkShare averted 308 layoffs last month.

“It’s been a win-win for us,” Moon said. Thanks to WorkShare, he said, the company was able to keep its employees on hand part-time for the training they would need to market the Anderson window products. “Rather than sending everyone out, then calling them back and starting a two- or three-month training program, they had been through the training and we were able to hit the ground running.”

Moon Associates is a bit unusual in that an expansion, rather than a loss of business, caused the company to use WorkShare.

Rhode Island is 1 of 19 states that use a work-sharing program, which should not be confused with job-sharing, in which two or more people share a single position. Other states that have work-sharing programs similar to Rhode Island’s include Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and New York.

Moon said his company used the Rhode Island WorkShare program for about 10 employees between last December and March. Now, he said, not only is everyone back to working full time, but the company has hired about 10 more workers, bringing total employment to 75.

Dave Doll, human relations manager for Moon Associates, said he heard about the WorkShare program at a seminar run by the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training, and brought it to Moon’s attention. Doll said there were a lot of questions from employees at first, about how the system would work, what would happen to health benefits, what this meant for the future of the company. “Nobody was particularly happy about it, but they understood why we had to do it,” Doll said. “It’s not something you look forward to, but it’s a lot better than being laid off.”

Lisa Gantz, of Warwick, is a senior customer service representative for Moom Associates who had her hours temporarily cut in half. She said she wasn’t too worried. The unemployment benefits brought her close to her original salary, and she was confident WorkShare was a temporary situation. “We felt as though we still belonged here,” she said.

Unemployment benefits for those in WorkShare depends on the percentage of hours that employers cut. If the workload is cut by 50 percent, for example, the employee receives 50 percent of their unemployment benefits. In Rhode Island, the unemployment benefit rate is approximately two-thirds of an employee’s original weekly salary, up to a maximum payment of $513 a week. .

The money for WorkShare comes from the taxes that employers are required to pay into the unemployment system.

The unemployment insurance program is a federal/state partnership based on federal law but administered by the states. Ray Filippone, assistant director of income support for the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training, is in charge of the administering the state’s unemployment benefits. Filippone said states have enough leeway under federal regulations to institute WorkShare programs, which have been in existence since 1992.

Filippone said there are 89 employers in Rhode Island currently using the WorkShare program, with 23 of those companies joining the program since January. According to DLT statistics, 836 initial claims for unemployment benefits were made under the WorkShare program last month, out of a total of 7,815 total initial unemployment claims. That’s up sharply from the same period a year ago, when there were 404 initial claims under WorkShare, out of a total of 6,959.

Like unemployment insurance in general, Filippone said, WorkShare participation tends to rise when the economy takes a downturn. WorkShare is not just being used by manufacturing companies, he said — insurance companies, marketing and financial firms, nursing homes, and social service organizations have all had employees in the WorkShare program.

The state encourages companies to use the WorkShare program, Filippone said. It helps individuals maintain their jobs, and it helps employers keep their trained employees, which makes it easier for companies to bounce back when business conditions improve.

For a company to take part in the WorkShare program, it must submit a plan to the Department of Labor and Training and have it approved by the department’s director, Sandra M. Powell. Once approved, the plan is good for one year. There is no upper limit to the size of a company that can participate in WorkShare, although a company must have at least two employees. Employees must work at least 30 hours a week and be eligible for unemployment benefits to take part in the WorkShare program.

The usual weekly hours for employees taking part in WorkShare must be reduced by at least 10 percent but not more than 50 percent. If employees are represented by a union, the WorkShare plan must be approved in writing by the appropriate unions.

The WorkShare plan is not intended to subsidize seasonal employees during their off seasons. The state defines seasonal employers as those who show a 20-percent difference between the highest level of employment and the lowest level of employment each year for three consecutive years..

asmith@projo.com