Six weeks to get a call back? What California is doing to improve unemployment wait times
Can’t get the help you need with unemployment benefits on the phones? An Employment Development Department will call you back — in four to six weeks.
“Right now it’s four to six weeks wait time on the call list,” EDD Director Sharon Hilliard told an Assembly budget subcommittee recently.
Cottie Petrie-Norris, D-Orange County, asked if she thought that was acceptable.
“No, absolutely not,” said Hilliard.
So, asked Petrie-Norris, “What is the target callback time you’ve set for your department?”
Hilliard explained, “We’re actually trying to get out of the business of doing callbacks.”
The agency is aiming for quick responses. That’s why, she said, EDD is upgrading its call centers so it can have fully-trained staff members available daily from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
But for now, the 8 to 8 line, established in April by Gov. Gavin Newsom to ease the backlog, is largely for general questions and what Hilliard called “secondary technical assistance.” Hilliard said she’s putting more “fully trained” people on that line.
A separate call center, which operates from 8 a.m. to noon Monday through Friday, is designed to handle individual issues.
When, asked Petrie-Norris, will an 8 to 8 call center with fully trained staff members be available? “I don’t have an exact date of that,” Hilliard said.
None of the call line complaints are surprising to the large number of people who have told The Bee and members of the California Legislature for months how they could not get through to the call centers, and when they did, often got few useful answers.
The volume of inquiries is expected to grow as benefit levels change, thanks to the end of the $600 supplemental payment the federal government provided from late March until the end of July. The White House and congressional leaders continue to negotiate a way to replace at least part of the payment, but remain far from an agreement.
Typical of the frustration unemployed some California residents endure is the story of Amber Marshall and her 19-year-old son Angel, both Sacramento area residents.
Marshall has been battling cancer, and was laid off from her jobs in holistic healing and as a front desk worker in March, as the coronavirus pandemic began to spread. Eventually she received $731 a week, which included the $600 federal payment.
Because that payment, created to help people weather the economic turmoil caused by the pandemic, ended, Marshall now gets $131.
“The extra $600 I got was enough to keep me in my apartment. My bills are 70% of my income, so I desperately needed that money,” she said.
Marshall wants to talk to someone at EDD about getting more help. So does her son.
He was laid off in April. He and his mother then began calling EDD every day for three consecutive weeks.
“We tried all different times of the day and night, most days calling an excess of 20 to 25 times,” Marshall said. “Each time we would call we would get the recorded message that they were not able to accept our call because of capacity.”
She did get through to a representative, who said the son’s claim had been received and it was in the process of being reviewed.
Two months passed. Progress on his claim was hampered by technical glitches.
He’s still received nothing. His mother, now seeking advice for her own situation, tried calling again Monday.
She got a recording saying if you filed, it will take three weeks to process. It then gave her four options to choose for more help. She chose the option offering questions and answers about her payment.
Another recording came on. “It said they have too high of call volume, and disconnects you. No info,” she said.
EDD has been scrambling to deal with an unprecedented volume of claims. Since the pandemic sent the economy reeling in March, EDD has processed 9.3 million claims. In 2010, the worst year of claims stemming from the Great Recession, the department processed 3.8 million claims.
Today, it’s hiring 5,300 workers to help respond more quickly and efficiently, and the state has redirected 1,300 workers already in the agency to help.
Hilliard last week outlined for the Assembly budget subcommittee on state administration an ambitious plan for improving customer service, as EDD staffers are being trained in how to handle individual cases.
Gov. Gavin Newsom last week said a “strike team” will provide within 45 days ways to “transform the customer experience of applying for and receiving UI (unemployment insurance) benefits.”
Lawmakers were still angry at what they were hearing from Hilliard.
“This information had to be pried out of Director Hilliard. Hiding pertinent information from the public, the media and Legislators is a pattern with this Director. She continues to mislead all of us to protect her Department from the consequences of her years of inaction,” said Assemblyman Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, who has sought, unsuccessfully so far, a state audit of EDD.
Democrats, too, were not pleased.
“EDD’s call centers have been a miserable failure. People can’t get through to a live agent, when they do the agent can’t help them, and then they are placed on 4-6 week waiting list for a call back. It’s ridiculous,” said Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco.
This story was originally published August 5, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Six weeks to get a call back? What California is doing to improve unemployment wait times."
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