The new head of the Oregon Employment Department promised Wednesday he will move quickly to work through thousands of unprocessed jobless claims and to make it easier for unemployed workers to reach the department – even if that requires calling in the National Guard.
Interim Director David Gerstenfeld took over the department Sunday after Gov. Kate Brown fired his predecessor, Kay Erickson. The department has struggled to cope with an unprecedented volume of jobless claims, erroneously denying benefits and frustrating workers with a phone system so overloaded it was essentially inoperable.
That left tens of thousands of Oregonians without income for weeks or even months during the heart of the coronavirus period, a period that pushed the state’s jobless rate to a record 14.2%. The state has received 461,000 jobless claims since the middle of March but has been unable to say just how many of those it actually owes money to.
“To those that have not yet received our benefits, I want to apologize. I am very sorry,” Gerstenfeld said on a media call Wednesday.
The department has paid more than $1.5 billion in benefits since the middle of March. Among ordinary claims, the department’s backlog has fallen from 100,000 claims a few weeks ago to around 20,000 claims now.
However, that figure excludes tens of thousands of claims from workers newly eligible for benefits and the department hasn’t been able to determine how much it owes overall.
That’s because Congress has expanded the benefits program to include self-employed and contract workers and Oregon hasn’t been able to track the number of applications it has received under that program or how much it owes.
The department has received at least 50,000 claims under that program, Gerstenfeld said, and has paid at least 10,000. But he said he cannot say with any precision who close either number is to the actual total.
When Oregon launched the benefits program from self-employed workers in April, it set up a separate portal for those claimants to apply. However, the department had no phone number for people to call seeking to check the status of their claim or to resolve problems.
The department finally launched phone service for self-employed workers this week (the number is 503-370-5400), and callers with long-backlogged claims say they have received immediate help once they get through to claims processors.
Congress has also waived the usual one-week waiting period before laid-off workers are eligible for benefits. However, Oregon has been unable to implement that waiver because of antiquated computer systems that date to the 1990s.
That means Oregon owes laid-off workers at least $200 million in federal money from their first week out of work, money those workers will never receive if the state is unable to implement the waiver by the end of the year.
On Wednesday, Gerstenfeld said he isn’t sure the department will meet that deadline given the technical complexity of the project.
“I can’t absolutely commit in stone. I can commit to us to doing everything possible,” he said. If the state isn’t able to meet that deadline on its own, Gerstenfeld said he will seek federal assistance.
The department’s phone lines have been consistently overwhelmed throughout the pandemic. Most callers receive only a busy signal and those who do get through spend more than three hours on hold, on average. Among those few callers who got that far, most were disconnected before reaching a claims processor.
Hold times have dropped significantly in the past several days but still average roughly an hour. Gerstenfeld said Wednesday the employment department has discussed bringing in the National Guard to assist in contacting workers with pending claims.
“We’re exploring this. They’re receptive,” Gerstenfeld said. He said there isn’t time to train the Guard on the detailed claims process, but he said members of the Guard could take down basic information and help people understand their claims status.
“We know that they’re very competent and they can learn enough to give some information to people,” Gerstenfeld said.
-- Mike Rogoway | mrogoway@oregonian.com | twitter: @rogoway |
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