In a July 17, 2026, opinion, the Illinois Appellate Court, First District, Workers’ Compensation Commission Division, addressed the scope of concurrent employment under §10 of the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act, 820 ILCS 305/1, et seq., in the context of a COVID-19 pandemic furlough in J-H Alliance Inc. v. Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission, 2026 IL App (1st) 251899WC. The court affirmed the circuit court’s reversal of the Commission as against the manifest weight of the evidence, holding that a claimant who was furloughed from her primary employer due to the pandemic remained concurrently employed within the meaning of the Act at the time she was injured while working for a secondary employer.
The opinion provides a significant application of the concurrent employment doctrine to pandemic-era disruptions, clarifies the meaning of “temporary” in the context of furloughs and layoffs, and reconciles the court’s analysis with prior precedent in Jacobs v. Industrial Commission, 83 N.E.2d 421 (Ohio App. 1947), Flynn v. Industrial Commission of Illinois, 94 Ill.App.3d 844, 419 N.E.2d 526, 50 Ill.Dec. 418 (4th Dist. 1981), and Bagwell v. Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission, 2017 IL App (4th) 160407WC, 84 N.E.3d 1149, 416 Ill.Dec. 672.
Factual Background
Kathleen Collins began working for Sunline Services, Inc., in April 2019. Sunline was a contract company that provided gate and ticket counter employees for international airlines at O’Hare International Airport. Collins was assigned to Lufthansa, where she worked as a gate agent and ticket counter customer service representative. She worked 32 to 40 hours per week for Sunline and considered it her primary employment.
Two months later, in June 2019, Collins began working part-time for J-H Alliance, Inc., doing business as “The UPS Store” (employer). She was hired by Christi Quist, the owner and franchisee of the UPS Store location. Collins informed Quist at the time of her application that she was employed with Sunline, and Sunline was likewise aware that Collins was seeking additional work. Quist testified that she hired Collins with the expectation that Collins would work part-time during busier months at Sunline and full-time at the UPS Store during December, which was the airline’s slow season.
In March 2020, Collins was furloughed from Sunline due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on airline travel. During the summer of 2020, approximately five months after being furloughed, Collins was offered an opportunity to return to Sunline on a part-time basis. She declined, stating that her supervisors at Sunline had advised her that it would not be worth the commute for only four hours of work. Her furlough status was not negatively impacted by her decision to decline the part-time opportunity, and she remained on furlough awaiting recall to full-time work.
Collins filed a claim for unemployment benefits based on her furlough from Sunline while continuing to work part-time for the employer. She was approved for benefits and received them until she was recalled by Sunline in July 2021.
On October 22, 2020, Collins sustained an injury to her wrist while working for the employer at the UPS Store. At the time of the injury, she was on furlough status with Sunline and was not receiving wages from Sunline. She was not scheduled to work for Sunline at the time of the accident.
When Collins was recalled to full-time status by Sunline in July 2021, she was unable to return because of the wrist injury.
Procedural History
In February 2021, Collins filed an application for adjustment of claim under the Act. The matter proceeded to a hearing in March 2022. The sole disputed issue relevant to this appeal was whether Collins was concurrently employed by Sunline at the time of her injury, which would require inclusion of her Sunline wages in the calculation of her average weekly wage under §10 of the Act.
In September 2022, the arbitrator found that Collins had sustained an accidental injury arising out of and in the course of her employment with the employer. However, the arbitrator concluded that Collins was not concurrently employed by Sunline at the time of the accident. The arbitrator found the reasoning in Bagwell compelling, noting that “employment” under §10 of the Act meant “paid work,” and that Quist’s testimony established the employer was not aware Collins was being compensated by Sunline at the time of the injury. 2026 IL App (1st) 251899WC at ¶19. The arbitrator also distinguished the facts from Jacobs, in which the claimant’s layoff had lasted only a few weeks, and noted that Collins had been furloughed for seven months prior to the injury. Additionally, the arbitrator observed that Collins had declined an opportunity to return to Sunline part-time in the summer of 2020, which the arbitrator viewed as inconsistent with the Flynn court’s emphasis on willingness to return at the earliest opportunity. The arbitrator determined Collins’s average weekly wage was $372.14 based solely on her earnings from the employer. 2026 IL App (1st) 251899WC at ¶2.
In August 2023, the Commission largely adopted the arbitrator’s decision, agreeing that Collins was not concurrently employed by Sunline. The Commission modified the average weekly wage upward to $404.79. One commissioner dissented, finding that Collins had met her burden of proving concurrent employment. 2026 IL App (1st) 251899WC at ¶21.
In March 2024, the Circuit Court of Cook County reversed the Commission, finding its decision was against the manifest weight of the evidence. The circuit court noted that employer’s knowledge of Collins’s employment with Sunline was uncontested, that Collins remained employed by Sunline — though on furlough subject to recall — at the time of injury, and that the Commission had failed to account for the extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic. The court also found that the Commission had misconstrued the holding in Bagwell, noting there was no evidence suggesting Collins volunteered for Sunline. The court remanded the matter for the Commission to amend Collins’s average weekly wage to reflect concurrent employment.
On remand, the parties stipulated that Collins’s average weekly wage with Sunline was $352.88. In February 2025, the Commission entered a modified decision finding concurrent employment and setting Collins’s combined average weekly wage at $757.67. 2026 IL App (1st) 251899WC at ¶25. The circuit court confirmed the Commission’s decision on remand in August 2025. The employer appealed. 2026 IL App (1st) 251899WC at ¶27.
Appellate Court’s Analysis: Standard of Review and Procedural Framework
The appellate court began by setting forth the procedural framework governing its review. When a circuit court reverses the Commission’s initial decision and the Commission enters a new decision on remand, the reviewing court must first determine whether the Commission’s initial decision was proper. If the initial decision was proper, the Commission’s decision on remand is void and must be vacated. The court therefore analyzed whether the Commission’s original August 2023 decision was against the manifest weight of the evidence.
On questions of fact, the manifest weight of the evidence standard applies, and the Commission’s decision will be reversed only when the opposite conclusion is clearly the proper result. On questions of statutory interpretation, review is de novo. The court noted that both parties agreed the manifest weight standard applied to the case as a whole, but observed that the Flynn court had applied de novo review in similar circumstances involving undisputed facts. The appellate court concluded that the claimant prevailed under either standard.
Concurrent Employment Under §10
The court turned to the central question: whether Collins was concurrently employed within the meaning of §10 of the Act at the time of her injury. Section 10 provides that when an employee is “working concurrently with 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.” 820 ILCS 305/10.
The employer argued that §10’s reference to “actual earnings” in computing average weekly wage required that the claimant be actively earning wages from both employers at the time of injury. The appellate court rejected this argument, noting that the plain language of the concurrent employment provision turns on whether the employer had “knowledge of such employment prior to the injury” — not on whether the claimant was actively receiving wages from the second employer at the moment of injury. 2026 IL App (1st) 251899WC at ¶45.
Application of Jacobs, Flynn, and the Meaning of “Temporary”
The court examined the undisputed facts in light of the framework established by Jacobs and Flynn. In Jacobs, the appellate court found concurrent employment when a sheet metal worker was subject to a two-to-three-week layoff that was common in his industry, his employer knew of his other employment, and the part-time job was a supplement to his primary income. In Flynn, the Supreme Court extended that analysis to a seasonal layoff, emphasizing the consistent recurrent nature of the claimant’s primary employment, the temporary nature of the layoff, and the claimant’s willingness and intent to return.
The Commission’s initial decision had distinguished Jacobs and Flynn based on the length of Collins’s furlough — seven months at the time of injury — compared to the shorter layoffs in those cases. The appellate court rejected this distinction, holding that “temporary” is a relative term that simply means impermanent, not necessarily brief. The court observed that a furlough is, by definition, temporary: a leave from work that is not paid and is often for a set period of time. 2026 IL App (1st) 251899WC at ¶44. The pandemic that caused Collins’s furlough was itself temporary, even though its effects lasted several years.
The court acknowledged that there may be cases in which a period of inactive employment is so unreasonably prolonged or tenuous that a finding of concurrent employment would not be appropriate. However, the court concluded that Collins’s case was not one of them. At the time of her injury, Collins was awaiting recall to full-time status. She had been offered part-time work by Sunline a few months before the injury. And when she was ultimately recalled to full-time work in July 2021, she was unable to return due to the very injury she sustained while working for the employer.
The court also invoked the analytical framework articulated in Flynn, which adopted the reasoning of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in Triangle Building Center v. Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board, 560 Pa. 540, 746 A.2d 1108 (2000): an employment relationship that has been temporarily severed may constitute concurrent employment so long as the relationship remains sufficiently intact that the claimant’s past earning experience remains a valid predictor of future earnings loss. 2026 IL App (1st) 251899WC at ¶37. The court concluded that Collins’s employment relationship with Sunline met this standard.
Distinguishing Bagwell
The court also addressed the Commission’s reliance on Bagwell, in which the appellate court held that “employment” under §10 meant “paid work” and that the employer’s knowledge of the claimant’s concurrent employment required knowledge that the claimant was being paid for the work, not merely that the claimant was performing services. In that case, the claimant served as a pastor, and his employer was aware of his pastoral role but not that he received payment for it.
The appellate court found Bagwell distinguishable. Unlike the pastor in Bagwell, there was no suggestion that Collins volunteered for Sunline. To the contrary, the evidence was undisputed that Collins’s work for Sunline was paid employment that the employer knew about at the time of hiring. The employer’s knowledge that Collins worked for Sunline — a contract staffing company providing airline customer service employees — was sufficient to satisfy §10’s knowledge requirement. The Bagwell concern about distinguishing volunteering from paid work simply did not arise on the facts of this case.
Commission’s Initial Decision Was Against Manifest Weight of Evidence
Based on the foregoing analysis, the appellate court concluded that the Commission’s initial August 2023 decision — finding no concurrent employment — was against the manifest weight of the evidence. The court held that the circumstances of the case showed with sufficient clarity that Collins’s employment with Sunline would have continued to play a part in her future earnings but for the injury she sustained while working for the employer. Accordingly, the Commission’s February 2025 decision on remand, which found concurrent employment and set the combined average weekly wage at $757.67, was supported by the record. The court affirmed the circuit court’s judgment confirming that decision.
Practical Implications
This decision carries several practical implications for both sides of the workers’ compensation bar.
For employers and carriers, the decision reinforces that the concurrent employment analysis does not hinge solely on whether the claimant was actively receiving wages from a second employer at the moment of injury. The relevant inquiry under §10 is whether the employer had knowledge of the claimant’s employment with another employer prior to the injury, and whether the employment relationship with the second employer remained sufficiently intact to constitute concurrent employment. Practitioners should be attentive to factual circumstances that suggest an ongoing employment relationship, even where the claimant is not actively working — particularly furloughs, seasonal layoffs, and other temporary separations in which the claimant retains recall rights and intends to return. The decision also signals that courts may take a broad view of what qualifies as “temporary,” particularly when a separation is driven by extraordinary external events such as a pandemic.
For claimants, the decision affirms that a furlough driven by extraordinary circumstances — here, a global pandemic — does not sever the employment relationship for purposes of the concurrent employment provision. Claimants who are furloughed or laid off from a primary employer while working for a secondary employer should ensure the record reflects the temporary nature of the separation, their intent and readiness to return, and the secondary employer’s knowledge of the primary employment. The court’s observation that Collins was recalled to full-time work by Sunline but was unable to return because of her work injury with the employer was a significant factor in the analysis, underscoring the importance of demonstrating that the primary employment would have resumed but for the injury.
The decision also highlights the distinction between Bagwell and cases involving conventional paid employment. When the second employer’s work is clearly compensated — as opposed to volunteer, pastoral, or community service activity — the knowledge requirement of §10 is satisfied by the employer’s awareness of the employment relationship itself, without the need to separately establish that the employer knew the claimant was being paid.
Finally, the court’s recognition that “temporary” does not mean “brief” introduces a degree of flexibility into the concurrent employment analysis. While the court acknowledged that there may be cases in which a separation is so prolonged or tenuous that concurrent employment would not be appropriate, it declined to impose a bright-line durational limit. Practitioners on both sides should be prepared to litigate the factual circumstances surrounding the separation, including the reason for the separation, the claimant’s intent to return, the availability of recall, and any intervening developments (such as offers of part-time work or changes in employment status) that bear on whether the employment relationship remained intact.
