Problems with the unemployment system are a bipartisan failure. And need a bipartisan solution. //end headline wrapper ?>Unemployment Insurance Claims Office. Photo by Bytemarks (CC-BY).
This week after almost a year of delays, the Legislature took a small step in fixing our state’s outdated unemployment compensation system.
The weaknesses in the system were first revealed by the recession last decade. The failures were further exposed by the current covid pandemic and the resulting layoffs, job losses, and forced closure of small businesses.
As a state legislator, I received call after call from the people I represent who struggled with filing an unemployment claim or resolving the claim. These were mainly small business owners, their employees, and self-employed professionals whose businesses were shut down by the pandemic.
Jobless people say DWD call center gives incorrect, contradictory information. //end headline wrapper ?>Unemployment Insurance Claims Office. Photo by Bytemarks (CC-BY).
Dawn Gleason estimates she’s called the state Department of Workforce Development‘s unemployment call center between nine and 12 times since late December.
Gleason, a single mother in Franklin who had breast cancer last year,
lost her job as the manager of a limousine dispatch service in March. She was relying on unemployment insurance to get by until those benefits ran out in December.
On one call to DWD’s help line, Gleason said she was told her new benefits would be paid by the beginning of January. That never came to pass.