Some laid-off Vermonters continue to face technical hurdles while trying to get their unemployment benefits.
New problems cropped up during the weekend involving the newly reinstated work-search requirement, the Vermont Department of Labor confirmed Monday.
Some claimants were never prompted to enter in their work-search contact information, causing concerns about whether their claims would be processed. Other claimants who should have been exempt from submitting a work search were still hit with the screen, and left wondering how to progress.
Labor Commissioner Michael Harrington said the department anticipated such problems and had teams on standby during the weekend to address them.
“We also were prepared because we knew, just maybe based on prior experience, that things tend to not always go off without a hitch,” Harrington said at Gov. Phil Scott’s press conference Tuesday.
Most of the problems related to the work-search requirement were resolved by Tuesday, and all eligible Vermonters should be able to file a claim by the end of the week, Harrington said.
Harrington attributed some of the blame to a familiar foe: the much-beleaguered mainframe computer that has stored the department’s claims database since the 1980s.
Some claimants are sorted into subcategories within the system if they meet certain criteria — for instance, if they have a return-to-work date, Harrington said. Then, when they tried to file for their unemployment benefits, they weren’t presented with a work-search screen “probably because they fell into one of these subcategories in the mainframe, and it just wasn’t caught in the initial coding,” he said.
Exemptions from submitting a work-search form include primary caregivers for children learning remotely, people advised to quarantine due to Covid-19, and people who are self-employed receiving federal pandemic unemployment assistance.
While not totally unexpected by the labor department, the issues were yet another point of confusion and frustration for claimants who have navigated technical difficulties dating back to last spring.
Angel Gendron-Gigure, a claimant who spoke with VTDigger, said she still hasn’t been able to make her usual claim this week. She waited on hold with the department’s help line for about 45 minutes — a common hurdle for claimants — before being disconnected.
Gendron-Gigure was eventually told she’d have to reset her security PIN, now that the system has been updated to include the work-search requirement. She expected to be able to file her usual claim on Wednesday.
Initial claims system kept offline
The online system for first-time claimants remains down without a clear timeline to return, but fraudulent unemployment claims remain low as well.
The labor department suspended the online system in late April after discovering that as many as 90% of unemployment claims filed each day were fraudulent. Harrington reiterated estimates that the department has paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraudulent unemployment claims since the beginning of the pandemic.
The current state of unemployment fraud is “under control,” Harrington said, pointing to a significant drop in overall claims. Vermont received 64 claims on Monday, compared to thousands of daily claims in April.
Now, the department is looking to reopen the online portal once it can be sure it won’t be flooded with claims once again.
“I don’t think fraud is going away; they’re just looking for other opportunities to get into systems across the country,” Harrington said.
Laid-off workers who need to file a first-time claim can do so over the phone by calling 877-214-3330 or 888-807-7072.
