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Like many Vermonters, Richmond’s Natasha Marchant lost her job at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Marchant was working at a dermatology office in Colchester as front office staff, checking patients in and out and answering phones, a job she started in September. But Marchant has run into a problem facing many Vermonters — an inability to get unemployment benefits to help get by during the coronavirus pandemic.
“One day I had my two kiddos and myself dialing, and we did like 1,700 phone calls and still didn’t get through,” she said. “The three of us just kept hanging up and calling back and none of us got through.”
Vermonters are overwhelming the state’s unemployment system and having a hard time getting the help they need. Between 80,000 and 85,000 Vermonters have filed for unemployment since the crisis began, a meteoric increase over past years.
The backlog got so deep that, on Gov. Phil Scott’s orders, the state began issuing $1,200 checks early last week to 8,384 Vermonters who had not yet been able to resolve issues with their claims.
Earlier this month, Scott said that Vermonters who have been unable to get through to the Department of Labor have “every right” to be angry.
“It’s not enough for me to say ‘have some patience’ because this isn’t about patience. I accept responsibility for this,” he said. “This is an area that we didn’t foresee and certainly, no excuses, but we need to do better.”
And while the Department of Labor has said that dozens of new call center workers and increased involvement by an outside vendor would expedite the process, Vermonters report continued difficulty in getting through to sort out issues barring them from receiving unemployment benefits.
“When you try to get ahold of unemployment, you call all day, 10 hours a day, and can’t get through,” Marchant said.
House Speaker Mitzi Johnson, D-South Hero, announced Monday that legislators would be helping constituents who need assistance getting unemployment, encouraging those that need help to reach out to their legislators.
Michael Harrington, the acting commissioner of the Department of Labor, said Monday that the state was ramping up its call centers to ease the access issues facing Vermonters.
The state is operating two triage call centers, he said, one a public/private partnership with more than 100 individuals taking calls and another a contracted site that will have 50 call center representatives by noon Tuesday, he said.
“Each day, our capacity is growing as well in terms of the number of calls,” he said.
Marchant said she was told that since she was self-employed prior to starting her new job in September, she was not eligible for unemployment assistance. Marchant ran an in-home day care from 2007 to September 2019.
“It’s frustrating,” she said. “I feel that if anybody got laid off due to Covid-19, there should be an automatic sum payment. I didn’t ask to get laid off, and my employer didn’t ask to lay me off.”
Marchant said she has had to ask her parents for financial assistance to get by during the pandemic.
“My parents are helping us, there’s nothing else we can do,” she said. “I haven’t been paid in five weeks, I’ve received nothing.”
Kurt S., who asked that his last name not be used for fear of retaliation, has been self-employed doing video work but took an hourly job at a printing company in Rutland earlier this year to make ends meet.
Kurt said that he had been repeatedly calling the Department of Labor for weeks with little success getting through. On Monday, he said he had been on hold for 45 minutes with the Department of Labor before getting disconnected.
“It’s my new full-time job,” he said.
Kurt said that after he was laid off, he applied for unemployment but said that he, too, was told that he was not eligible as he did not have wages for last year as he was self-employed.
Kurt said he applied for the self-employed assistance system and said he believed he was denied because he had said that he could tele-work for pay. But video work has dried up due to the coronavirus, and he said he is struggling to get by.
And since he can’t get through to the Department of Labor, he said he couldn’t know for sure why he was deemed ineligible.
“I feel disregarded, like I’ve fallen through the cracks and society doesn’t care,” he said.
Many Vermonters are struggling getting through to unemployment to get help on their claims.
Dale Newton, 65, of Marshfield, works as a seasonal employee at Burke Mountain during the winters, and owns and operates a B&B and pick-your-own organic blueberry and raspberry farm.
Newton lost his job as a ski instructor running the mountain’s school program in the middle of March, and said he had been frequently calling unemployment with very little success.
“Like a lot of people, you’d sit at the phone, you’d put in the number at eight o’clock and you’d just start hitting redial,” he said. “And you could do that all day long if you had the patience. Never ever, ever would I get through to anybody.”
Newton, who is receiving income as a retired teacher and is now also receiving Social Security, said he would be able to make ends meet throughout the crisis.
But he said he was worried about other seasonal workers, and was planning on using unemployment pay to hire one of his colleagues from the mountain to work on his farm this year.
“He’s struggling right now financially,” Newton said. “I’ve been wanting some of my unemployment to help someone else out. I’m OK, I’m going to make it … and I’m thankful.”
Self-employed Vermonters and small business owners are also struggling to access unemployment benefits.
Katlin Parenteau owns Live Iron, a tattoo parlor in North Troy. Parenteau said neither she nor her employee has received any assistance at all from the government — not her $1,200 stimulus check from the federal government, nor funding from small business relief programs or unemployment benefits.
“We’re doing everything we can, and communicating with unemployment and following all the steps, but the problem is, there’s actually no assistance happening,” she said. “Many business owners have been without income for a month.”
Parenteau said she has turned to other outside-the-box methods using her art skills to make money, including painting portraits of people’s dogs and carving cow bones and selling them for $100 each.
Parenteau said that while she has enough in the bank to get by for now, other small business owners and individual contractors with less savings are in trouble.
“If you don’t have savings right now, you’re up shit’s creek,” she said.
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