Sounds like your husband spent years paying into the unemployment fund for nothing in return.
Much better to try and get at least some of that money back than to be happy with that kind of lose-lose situation in the name of principle.
Ya’ just have to understand a man back then... even though the government took it out of his paycheck all that time.. he considered standing in that line and drawing that check, ‘welfare’, in some fashion. They were taught to work for a living.
Folks like him should be given an "opt out" from paying into something they'll never use (but they have to be barred from using it).