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With around 10,000 calls about unemployment coming in every day and overwhelming the Vermont Department of Labor, the state is seeking a private contractor to help take calls.
The department announced Friday that it had put out a bid for a vendor to take on more “straightforward” unemployment calls to free up DOL staff to resolve claims issues.
The department is also asking Vermonters to follow a weekly schedule based on the alphabetical order of last names for filing claims online and for calling for assistance. Online filing remains open to everyone on Fridays and Sundays, and the assistance phone lines are open to all on Fridays and Saturdays.
The department is still encouraging Vermonters to file their weekly claims through the automated phone system at 800-983-2300, which does not have the alphabetical restrictions, rather than online.
The changes come as Vermonters have faced delays in reaching state labor officials, and in some cases are uncertain about their benefits, as the unemployment system has been overwhelmed during the Covid-19 crisis.
“We know it’s incredibly hard and incredibly frustrating,” Labor Commissioner Michael Harrington said Friday. “And so I extend my deepest gratitude for those of you who are trying to get through and can’t get through or are waiting to get your benefits.”
“We’re hoping that this vendor solution for our expansion of our call center services will allow our skilled staff to focus on clearing issues on claims and getting more benefits out in a more timely manner,” he said.
Since March 15, the Vermont Department of Labor has received almost 73,000 initial claims requests. The department’s decades-old mainframe computer system crashes every Sunday, when claimants can start filing for the previous week.
As of Friday, the state had issued 41,000 benefit payments totaling $25.8 million, according to Harrington. Once claims are processed, Vermonters waiting on checks will receive back payment from the day they were laid off.
The department tapped around 25 people from Green Mountain Power, Vermont Gas, and Efficiency Vermont to help the state deal with the surge in initial claims.
But about half of the initial claims filed have a “stop payment” issue attached, and resolving those issues has eaten up around 80% of the call center’s resources, said Harrington.
The department has been training staff from the tax department and Department of Motor Vehicles to clear up issues in the state’s old mainframe computer system, he added.
“Our number one priority right now is issues clearing, because that’s what’s causing people to have to call,” Harrington told lawmakers Friday afternoon.
The department expects to choose a contractor to operate the third-party call center next week.
Sen. Michael Sirotkin, D-Chittenden, urged Harrington to not scrimp in beefing up the call center.
“I can’t emphasize enough the messages I’m getting about how frustrated people are that they simply can’t get someone on the phone,” he said.
Up until last month, Jonathan Taylor was working as a dishwasher at Montpelier’s New England Culinary Institute. He was laid off after Gov. Phil Scott announced in mid-March that restaurants had to halt sit-down service in an effort to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus.
And so Taylor, like tens of thousands of other Vermonters who have been laid off in the past month, went to sign up for unemployment benefits. He initially tried to apply online, only to find after entering his information in and arriving at a page that prompted him to choose what employer to use for unemployment benefits that none of his work history lined up.
Taylor then called the unemployment office and spoke with a Green Mountain Power operator helping the overburdened Department of Labor. The interaction was “pleasant” and everything appeared to go smoothly, said Taylor.
But he grew concerned after a couple weeks of receiving “no sign” that his information had ever gone to the unemployment office. He called GMP back and was told that an initial batch of claims had been corrupted in the old computer system. When he has subsequently tried entering his Social Security number using the online system to see where his benefits were, nothing comes up.
Over three weeks after being laid off, Taylor has yet to receive any unemployment benefits.
“It’s made it really difficult because basically I don’t have any money left in my account,” he said in an interview Thursday.
And self-employed individuals and independent contractors, now eligible for unemployment insurance under the new federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, face a whole different set of challenges in receiving those benefits. The Derby hair salon where Angie Falconer, of Brownington, rents a chair was among the “close contact” businesses required by the governor to stop operating by March 23.
Falconer applied for unemployment insurance soon after she had to stop working but was not able to declare her income as a self-employed individual in the state portal. She added that she feels “fortunate” that her husband still has a job at Cabot Creamery.
“I just feel bad for the people who are on two self-employed incomes,” she said in an interview. “How are they paying their bills? How are they buying food?”
Lawmakers raised similar questions with Harrington, noting that some self-employed constituents became alarmed after applying for unemployment insurance only to receive letters back telling them they were ineligible.
Counterintuitively, the first step to access that federal money is actually to file an initial claims form and be denied for regular unemployment insurance, said Harrington.
Due to the complex federal reporting requirements that come with distributing that money, the DOL will roll out a new computer system to distribute Pandemic Unemployment Assistance money the week of April 20. Harrington added that his “biggest concern” right now was with the 40,000 to 50,000 additional claims the department is expecting to come in through that avenue.
Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe, D-Chittenden, noted that it would be over a month before some people have “received a penny” with that new system not set to be ready for over a week, and urged Harrington to have as many people as possible prepared to help deal with the surge in claims when it goes live.
“We should be treating it, frankly, just like we’re treating hospital beds with surge capacity so that we hope we don’t need it, but if it’s there, we have handled people humanely through what is for some of them the first time they’ve ever suffered this way economically in their lives,” he said.
Clarification: This story was updated to clarify the weekly schedule that the Department of Labor is asking Vermonters to follow for filing unemployment claims online and for calling for assistance. The full schedule, and guidance for filing online claims, is available at this link.