The Oregon Employment Department’s website again is telling many workers this Sunday morning that they must restart their claims when they make their weekly filing for benefits. That’s a mistake – most workers do not need to start over – but it doesn’t appear they have an immediate alternative to make their weekly filing for continued benefits.
Several workers emailed The Oregonian/OregonLive early this Sunday morning to report the issue and many others are writing angrily about the problem on Twitter.
The employment department’s website still said, incorrectly, that “The restart stop issue has been fixed.”When workers tried to file their weekly claims Sunday morning, though, the system instructs them to “Restart Your Claim.”
Employment department communications director Gail Krumenauer wrote in an email that the department was working on a new fix. She added that the issue was not affecting everyone, and that about 60,000 claims had been processed successfully Sunday.
The department did not respond to a question last week about how it will communicate proactively when such mistakes emerge. It did acknowledge the issue in a tweet.
For now, workers encountering Sunday’s restart error apparently must wait for the department to implement another fix. The department fixed last week’s problem on Monday – but then insisted it wouldn’t recur again the beginning of this week.
“We have an IT fix in place that should prevent the re-start error from happening again, or happening to a new set of claimants, next week,” the department told The Oregonian/OregonLive last Monday.
The employment department is struggling to cope with an onslaught of jobless claims. Close to 300,000 Oregonians lost their jobs in the first weeks of the coronavirus outbreak as restaurants, bars and many other businesses shut down to contain the epidemic.
The department has been unable to process many claims because it still relies on a 1990s computer system to process claims. The state has been planning an overhaul since it received federal funding for an upgrade in 2009 but estimates the new computers won’t be fully in place until 2025.
Oregon’s antiquated computers frequently deny claims to people who are legally entitled to benefits, a problem that has exploded with the surge in claims. That’s resulted in jammed phone lines and delays in benefits to thousands of newly laid off workers.
Meanwhile, Oregon has been unable to adapt its computers to process changes in the jobless benefits system that Congress approved last month to alleviate the economic crisis brought on by the coronavirus. That means thousands of more unemployed Oregonians are not receiving full benefits.
For example, Oregon cannot process claims made by gig workers and the self-employed even though Congress made them eligible for benefits last month. The state has given no estimate of when it will be able to process their claims.
And Oregon has been unable to waive the “waiting week” – a period before for newly unemployed workers are eligible to start receiving financial benefits. Congress authorized state to waive the waiting period last month but Oregon, unlike other states, has been unable to implement the waiver.
Under pressure from Oregon’s congressional delegation, Gov. Kate Brown said last week the state will eventually waive the waiting period and make it retroactive to workers who already filed claims. But Brown said that will require “thousands of hours” of computer programming and gave no estimate of when that will take place.
— Mike Rogoway | mrogoway@oregonian.com | twitter: @rogoway |
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