Hundreds of out-of-work Alabamians waited for hours Wednesday in a Montgomery parking lot for the chance to meet with a representative of the Alabama Department of Labor. Many sat outdoors through the night in intermittent rain in hopes of speaking face-to-face with someone about administrative issues that caused the state to deny their claims for unemployment benefits.
Nora Hardy, 62, was the first person in line for help Wednesday morning. She does not have reliable transportation, so a friend drove her from Mobile to Montgomery, where she secured her spot in the lengthy queue around 7 p.m. Tuesday.
Hardy, who was laid off from her job at a car rental service earlier this year, sat on a folding chair overnight to ensure she would be able to talk to a Department of Labor employee about restarting her unemployment benefits after they were canceled six weeks ago due to an error she made filling out a claim form.
Hardy said she spent seven hours waiting for assistance at a Department of Labor career center in Mobile only to be told her issue could only be resolved if she met with one of the department’s employees inside the Dunn-Oliver Acadome, an indoor arena on the campus of Alabama State University in Montgomery.
“My husband passed away so I really do need the income,” she said. “It’s really pitiful for America to be going through this.”
Last month, the state declared that people seeking help with many common unemployment concerns must travel to the Montgomery arena, the only place where specially trained state employees are offering assistance.
That directive has combined with widespread economic insecurity and an overwhelmed department phone system to drive masses of unemployed people to travel from across the state to Montgomery every day. Across Alabama, as many businesses have cut costs and some have shut down for good, the COVID-19 pandemic has left hundreds of thousands of residents jobless.
More than two-dozen such people said in interviews outside the Acadome early Wednesday that they had been left with no other option but to brave the capital’s coronavirus outbreak, long wait times and inclement weather to address concerns including improperly completed forms and unexpected revocations.
Tara Hutchison, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Labor, said agency employees have met with more than 12,000 people over the past seven weeks at the arena and at a previous Montgomery location.
She said via phone Wednesday that six to ten department employees work at the Acadome daily and that they meet with a total of 300 people each weekday. As of May, Alabama’s unemployment rate was 9.9 percent and more than 308,000 people have received state unemployment checks in Alabama since March 16, Hutchison said.
“We’re doing this as an added benefit to our claimants in order to provide them an avenue to get face-to-face time with our employees,” she said. “You know, we’ve heard a lot of complaints that it’s only in Montgomery. Well, the fact of the matter is that all of our Unemployment Compensation Division is located in Montgomery. There are no employees located statewide to do this in other locations.”
Gina Maiola, a spokeswoman for Gov. Kay Ivey, said via email that “[t]he Department of Labor is doing all they can to help Governor Ivey get Alabama and her people back on their feet, which includes hosting these in-person times and venues, which are above and beyond that of the traditional methods. The governor believes that the people of Alabama deserve nothing less.”
Asked if it is reasonable or fair to expect people to wait outside for hours for help with basic unemployment issues, Hutchison said, “as to what time the people arrive at Alabama State University, we have no control over that. Again, that’s completely voluntary.”
Several people in the queue at the Montgomery facility Wednesday morning questioned why the Department of Labor could not allow people to make appointments for help resolving their unemployment questions, thereby avoiding the need for lengthy outdoor lines. Hutchison said the department is not equipped to offer such a service.
“An appointment system - Number one: We don’t have the technology to do it. Number two: How would we enforce it?” she said.
“Even if we did set up appointments, that’s not necessarily going to stop those [people] from coming anyway, and then being turned away regardless. So the best system that we have been able to determine is the ticketing system.”
State unemployment benefits in Alabama are less generous than those offered in many other states. One out-of-work gig economy grocery deliverer from Birmingham said she received only $114 per week from the state until her benefits were halted earlier this month. Josh Gilmore, a diesel mechanic from Knoxville - an unincorporated community in Greene County - who has been out of work since March, said that he received $275 per week until his benefits were cut off.
Gilmore’s fiancee, Frances DiMario, owns a landscaping company but has been forced into unemployment as a result of reduced demand for her company’s services due to coronavirus-related cutbacks. She said the lack of options offered by the Department of Labor forced her and Gilmore to make the tough decision to spend some of their dwindling funds to travel to Montgomery on Wednesday.
“People can’t afford their power bill, never mind getting here. Should I spend that $50 on the power bill or to come here today?” she said. “I’d much rather be working than having to be sitting here dealing with this, because this is ridiculous. If there were work it’d be a whole different story - and believe me I’ve looked. I’ll paint, I’ll build a fence, I’ll do whatever.”
Asked why the department’s employees can’t address issues like DiMario’s at any of its offices in other cities across the state, Hutchison said the offices are only “career centers” with no employees on staff who have the necessary training to resolve complicated unemployment benefit disputes.
“The state of Alabama hasn’t had unemployment offices in 15 years or more,” she said, noting that because Alabama had low unemployment before the pandemic, the federally funded agency was ill-prepared to handle the sharp increase in claims since March. “We all came in with reduced staff due to low unemployment, reduced budgets due to low unemployment, and then this happened basically overnight.”
Henry Brewster, an attorney in Mobile, has been working pro bono in recent months with the Mobile Bar Association and the South Alabama Volunteer Lawyers Program to help people who are having trouble obtaining unemployment insurance benefits. He said many of them are in desperate need of state assistance.
“These are folks who often have no resources, that’s why the file for unemployment. Alabama has one of the lowest monthly unemployment benefits in the country,” Brewster said. “People lose their job, they’re often a rent check away from being evicted, they’ve got families to care for, and when there’s this kind of delay, then it’s causing these issues to become catastrophes.”
One of Brewster’s clients, Lorren West, lost her employment with a Mobile museum on April 4 due to COVID-19 restrictions. She filed for unemployment the following day and received a monetary determination letter on April 8, but she says she has yet to receive a state unemployment check because her employer has failed to send the Department of Labor a letter explaining why she is unable to work.
West said that if her issue is not resolved by the end of the day Thursday, she will likely drive to Montgomery to speak to a representative at the Acadome on Friday. She has already spent hours trying to get assistance via telephone and in person at the career center in Mobile, where she spoke with other unemployed people who were in dire straits.
“Luckily I had savings, but a lot of people don’t have savings so they were losing their homes. That breaks my heart because if there’s money that’s due them, they shouldn’t be losing their homes,” she said. “I’m not a lazy person. I want to work. I’m not committing fraud or anything. I’m just a 58-year-old single woman trying to move through life’s journey the best I can.”
A state Department of Labor employee gave Lorren West a flier about the department's in-person meetings in Montgomery. The number of people the department can meet with at Alabama State University per day has dropped to 300 since this flier was printed. (Courtesy Lorren West)
James Murray said he drove to Montgomery from Tuskegee early Tuesday, hoping to see a Department of Labor representative later that day, but was already too late for one of the 300 coveted daily slots when he arrived at 2 a.m. So he returned that evening to secure one of the first spots in line to see someone on Wednesday.
“We got here last night at 9 o’clock. That’s the only way you can stand a chance is to come that far ahead of time,” he said a few minutes before 5 a.m. Wednesday.
On March 15, the 71-year-old was laid off from his food service job due to the coronavirus. He received unemployment checks for six weeks, but said they were discontinued in May when the Department of Labor claimed he had committed fraud by working while receiving unemployment benefits. He denies the allegation, saying that he has not worked since he was laid off, but was told by a department employee that the only way he could make his case that he did not defraud the government was to appear in person at the Acadome.
“I hope to get reinstated because I do have email correspondence from my employer stating that I haven’t been working since March 15,” he said, clutching a stack of papers several inches tall. “I don’t care how much or how little it is. I’m entitled to something.”
Many of the people who were waiting in line - six feet from one another to enforce social distancing - early Wednesday said they had tried for weeks to get help and that seeking in-person assistance in Montgomery was their last resort.
Mona Williams arrived outside the arena at 3:45 a.m. Wednesday after spending dozens of hours trying in vain to get help via phone and online. The Prattville media professional said she is being denied unemployment benefits because the state has yet to receive a separation letter from her employer. But she says that’s only because the Department of Labor’s fax lines have been busy since she went on furlough from her job earlier this month.
“I’ve been unable to get anyone on the telephone. I have three people trying to fax the letter of separation 30 to 40 times a day and they haven’t been able to get through for eight days and the deadline is Thursday for my employer to respond,” she said. “I’m going to show them the documentation and hopefully they’ll get it corrected and they’ll get me my money.”
Every one of the more than two-dozen people who spoke with AL.com on Wednesday criticized the Department of Labor for being unable to address their concerns without requiring them to wait outdoors for hours.
“When you do get people on the phone they’re not trained to do anything,” DiMario said. “And it seems to me there should be more locations open.”
Hutchison said that the department receives more than 210,000 phone calls each day and that it is not equipped to handle that many calls.
“We do understand that getting in touch with us on the telephone is extremely difficult and that is simply due to the fact that we have an overwhelming volume of calls and claims coming in on a daily basis,” she said.
Pierre Hines traveled from Oxford to Montgomery Wednesday morning in hopes of finding a way for his unemployment benefits to resume.
The father of three was temporarily laid off from his job as a field technician for New Flyer of America in March due to the pandemic and has yet to return to work. He received benefits for several weeks but said the checks stopped coming in May after the Department of Labor claimed he owed the state money dating back to a two-week spell of unemployment in 2011.
He said he told a department representative over the phone that he has documentation that he paid the less than $200 nearly a decade ago, but that he was told he could only make a case for his benefits to be reinstated if he met with a representative in Montgomery.
“I like working, but I need unemployment. I got a wife, kids, a house. I need it,” he said. “It’s hurting. I’m hoping it’ll get resolved today. It needs to get resolved.”
"wait" - Google News
June 25, 2020 at 11:53PM
https://ift.tt/3810ONA
Hundreds wait outdoors for hours seeking Alabama unemployment benefits - AL.com
"wait" - Google News
https://ift.tt/35qAU4J
https://ift.tt/2Ssyayj
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Hundreds wait outdoors for hours seeking Alabama unemployment benefits - AL.com"
Post a Comment