Thousands who refuse to return to work are being reported to the state to have their unemployment benefits potentially revoked.

DENVER — After scraping by for weeks on unemployment checks and peanut butter sandwiches, Jake Lyon recently received the call that many who temporarily lost their jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic have anticipated: The college-town tea shop where he worked was reopening, and it was time to go back.

Six of them permanently lost their jobs in May, and their former employer reported them to the state’s unemployment office to have their benefits potentially revoked.

As people across the United States are told to return to work, employees who balk at the health risks say they are being confronted with painful reprisals: Some are losing their jobs if they try to stay home, and thousands more are being reported to the state to have their unemployment benefits cut off.

But workers now worry about contracting the coronavirus once they return to cramped restaurant kitchens, dental offices or conference rooms where few colleagues are wearing masks.

Some states with a history of weaker labor protections are encouraging employers to report workers who do not return to their jobs, citing state laws that disqualify people from receiving unemployment checks if they refuse a reasonable offer of work.

Labor advocates and unions say the push to recall workers and kick reluctant employees off unemployment benefits carries grave risks in an age of coronavirus, when infections have rampaged through meatpacking plants, call centers, factories and other confined spaces where co-workers spend hours touching the same surfaces and breathing the same air.

“Their choices are: ‘Do I go back and risk my life, or say no and risk being kicked off unemployment and not be able to pay my bills?’” said Rachel Bussett, an employment lawyer in Oklahoma, where 179 businesses have reported workers to the unemployment agency.

Missouri has received 982 reports of workers refusing to return to their jobs.

In Tennessee, where 735 workers have been reported for refusing to return to work, the state labor commissioner announced that the fear of contracting the coronavirus was not a good enough excuse to not go back.

To continue to qualify for unemployment, workers need to be directly affected by the virus: They must have a diagnosed case of Covid-19, be caring for a patient or be confined by a quarantine, among other reasons outlined by Congress in the coronavirus stimulus law that was passed in March.

The question has split along partisan lines, with some Republican politicians and business owners complaining that furloughed workers have little incentive to go back to work if they are earning more from the emergency aid passed by Congress.

Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, recently told a Senate panel that workers who turned down their old jobs could be ineligible for unemployment payments.

“This is uncharted waters,” said Kersha Cartwright, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Labor, which has encouraged businesses to work with employees on reopening plans after the state became one of the first in the country to forge ahead with reopening.

In interviews across the country, workers said they were anxious to keep their jobs at a time when the economic devastation of the coronavirus has left more than 40 million in the country out of work.

With the job market bleak and many family members unemployed, many people said they felt powerless to refuse an order to return to work or question the safety practices at their jobs.

Lyon lost his unemployment benefits after his former bosses reported him to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.

Lyon’s work “did not present an unacceptable risk” to his health, and disqualified him from unemployment for 20 weeks.

Liu said the business was also obligated under Colorado labor laws to notify the state when they dismissed the six workers, inciting the unemployment investigation.

workers — have filed for unemployment benefits since the pandemic took hold.

Fully 39 percent of former workers living in a household earning $40,000 or less lost work, compared with 13 percent in those making more than $100,000, a Fed official said.

“I’m damned if I come to work, damned if I don’t come to work,” he said.

He was unable to reach anyone from Michigan’s overwhelmed unemployment system to answer whether he could refuse to go back and still retain his benefits.

In Boise, Idaho, Robin Slater, a 65-year-old line cook with chronic shortness of breath from 40 years of smoking, said he was reluctant to answer the call back to work at the sports bar where he constantly bumps up against other cooks in the tiny kitchen.

Slater said he had little choice other than returning to work because he was almost certain to lose his $220 in weekly unemployment, supplemented by the $600 passed as part of the coronavirus relief bill

So far, 147 workers in Idaho have been reported as refusing to work, though the state did not say how many had lost benefits