All that said, it's not fair for the fired employee to receive unemployment benefits only until the date on which they would have stopped working if they had not been fired.
Unemployment assistance is a public benefit that people (generally) qualify for if they are fired without cause; it helps them get by until they are able to find another job. You can qualify for unemployment assistance even if your work has a defined end date. I have a buddy who works on film sets, so his jobs typically last 4-5 months. But even if the film is scheduled to wrap up filming in a week, he would still qualify for unemployment if he were let go, and not just for the single week he would have been working.
The implicit understanding of giving notice is, "I intend to work for you until this date." But if the employer fires them prior to that date, it totally invalidates whatever notice was given.
Keep in mind that date of notice and date of separation are different. Between those two dates, the employee has the same expectation of employment, and the public benefits associated with it, as any other employee. If you get fired prior to your date of departure, whether or not you have given your employer the courtesy of notice, then you should qualify for the same unemployment benefits as someone who has not given the courtesy of notice.
Think about it. It would really suck if Employee A and Employee B both intend to stop working two weeks from now; Employee A is a jerk and plans to give no notice; Employee B is nice and gives two weeks' notice; both employees are fired without cause several days later; and Employee A gets at most 10 days' worth of unemployment benefits, while Employee B gets the standard 6 months.
You may be right legally, I really couldn't say, but it makes perfect sense to me that the unemployment benefits would extend only to the announced separation date.
But if an employer fires an employee, that upends the arrangement, whether or not the employee was planning to stop working at future date, and whether or not the employee has given the employer notice of that fact.
Frankly, the only reason it's considered common practice to give notice is because there is an implicit expectation that you will continue to be employed until your date of planned separation and can make arrangements based on that fact. If employers regularly fired anyone who gave notice, and offered them no severance, no one would give notice.
So, for the purposes of qualifying for unemployment benefits, it should not matter whether you had planned to stop working for your employer on some future date. The firing has nullified those plans. The employer has prevented you from working until the date on which you intended to stop working, and so it's almost nonsensical to say, "Well, now you're out of a job, but let's treat you as if you still have a job that you're still planning to quit on the date you specified."
If 5 people are planning to share a cake and I say I'm going to eat that cake on Friday, all by myself. If you eat the cake on Tuesday. Everyone doesn't get to switch to being mad at me on Friday. You still ate all the cake.
IMO, the issue here isn't wrongful termination, it's providing false information to the state. Firing someone because they intend to resign in the future is probably legal, but it doesn't change the fact that they were fired. It sounds like the employer reported that they resigned, which simply isn't true.
I just don’t think that’s a sufficient argument for saying that the employee is entitled to those things legally or ethically.
Ethically, the thing I have the biggest problem with is the employer characterizing the circumstances of the separation as anything other than a firing on November 1st. Effectively they are trying to say they fired the person on November 1st, then they rehired that person on January 1st, at which point they immediately resigned. I just don't think that's an accurate description of the circumstances.
[1] Massachussetts General Law Chapter 151A, Section 25, preamble and paragraph e: https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXXI/Ch...
I've in fact quit a company in Massachusetts before when I was younger because I was falsely accused of theft. They provided me unemployment which I refused on principle. Turned out the manager who accused me was the one stealing. Karma paid her a visit in that she was stabbed during a robbery on the shift she had to cover because of me leaving (she was fine with stitches). After this is when she was caught. So fun times all around.
During the two months after they gave notice, the employee might have intended to send out applications in the evenings. Since there is often a significant lead time between submitting an application and hearing back, the employee may have been counting on the two months of employment to burn some of that wait.
Hiring is probably also cyclic. For example, between Thanksgiving and New Years is probably not a very productive time to be looking for jobs. The employee may have been counting on the two months before their resignation date to get them through one of these slow periods.
And the company has the money, legal team, and power.
And the person has, well, less money, and no legal team, and low/no power.
And that's why all layoffs and firings need to include why. There shouldn't be any of this without-reason dismissals.
Aside from a little extra cash (since the unemployment they did get wouldn't have been anywhere near the amount their paychecks would have been for) I'm also not really sure what the end goal here is... just put this crappy employer behind you and move on.