Illinois appellate panel: a furloughed worker stays 'concurrently employed' for average-weekly-wage purposes

The Illinois Appellate Court's First District has affirmed that a worker on a pandemic-era furlough from one job remained "concurrently employed" with that employer when she was injured at a second job, so wages from both employers had to be combined in calculating her workers' compensation benefit rate. The decision, J-H Alliance Inc. v. Illinois Workers' Compensation Commission, 2026 IL App (1st) 251899WC-U, was filed June 5, 2026. Justice Cavanagh delivered the order, with Presiding Justice Holdridge and Justices Rochford, Mullen, and Barberis concurring.

The order is important to note as a procedural matter: it was filed under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 23(b) and, per the notice on its face, "is not precedent except in the limited circumstances allowed under Rule 23(e)(1)." It is reported here for what it shows about how the court applied existing Illinois concurrent-employment law to a furlough fact pattern, not as binding authority.

According to the order, the claimant, Kathleen Collins, was a gate and ticket agent assigned through a contractor, Sunline Services, Inc., to an airline at O'Hare International Airport, and separately worked part-time at a UPS Store franchise operated by the appellant, J-H Alliance Inc. The court recounted that she was furloughed from Sunline in March 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic's effect on air travel, was injured at the UPS Store job in October 2020, and was not recalled to full-time work at Sunline until July 2021 — by which point, the court found, her work injury prevented her return.

The dispute turned on Section 10 of the Illinois Workers' Compensation Act (820 ILCS 305/10), which the court quoted as providing that when an employee works concurrently for two or more employers "and the respondent employer has knowledge of such employment prior to the injury, his wages from all such employers shall be considered as if earned from the employer liable for compensation." The Commission's initial 2023 decision had found no concurrent employment and set the average weekly wage at $404.79; after the circuit court reversed and remanded, the Commission found concurrent employment and, per the order, set a combined average weekly wage of $757.67, with temporary partial disability benefits of $439.59 for 2 3/7 weeks and temporary total disability benefits of $505.11 for 70 weeks. The appellate panel affirmed the judgment confirming that remand decision.

In its analysis, the court reasoned that a furlough did not sever the employment relationship for Section 10 purposes. It observed that "temporary" is a relative term and that a furlough is, by definition, a temporary leave, concluding that the relationship "would have played a part in [the claimant's] future earnings but for the injury." The panel distinguished a 2017 decision, Bagwell, in which a second job (as a paid pastor) was excluded because the employer was not shown to know the work was paid; here, the court found, the employer knew of the Sunline employment and there was no suggestion the Sunline work was unpaid volunteering. The court cautioned that there may be cases where a period of inactive employment is "so unreasonably stretched that concurrent employment is not an appropriate finding," but held this was not such a case.

This article reports the court's stated findings and reasoning and quotes the opinion sparingly; it does not reproduce the underlying record.