Hundreds of thousands of us have depended on state benefits to get through this crisis. Expanded federal unemployment benefits have filled a critical need, and state leaders have also taken many valuable steps, including protections for high-risk workers, waiving the job search, relief for undocumented workers, and extending the eviction moratorium.
But the unemployment system has failed to provide timely support for far too many of us. Our state's failure to address the crisis in the unemployment system has mean financial crisis for tens of thousands of workers. It's meant a threat to public health as unpaid claimants are forced to return to work despite the risks. And it's meant deepening inequities as communities of color & immigrants face disproportionate barriers to accessing unemployment.
And with COVID cases spiking, we could very well be seeing another surge of unemployment claims.
Economic security is key to public health, and the state must take action to ensure this looming wave of claims does not overwhelm the system, delay the payment of benefits, and make the crisis even worse. We need the unemployment system to do what it’s supposed to: pay benefits to workers who lose their jobs. And we need it to happen quickly, so unemployed workers can do what’s necessary to stay safe, and aren’t pressured from lack of income to return to work before it’s safe.
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This is an unprecedented crisis — and we need bold steps to support workers and protect public health.
That’s why unemployed workers and supporters across Washington state are demanding emergency policy changes so our system can meet the needs of the moment by taking the following four concrete steps to provide economic security, protect public health, and address inequities for communities of color.
1) A MORATORIUM ON COLLECTIONS, GARNISHMENTS, AND “OVERPAYMENT” NOTICES.
Thousands of workers are receiving notices from ESD informing them they owe the state money — and that the state may take aggressive steps to collect that money. These threats can push people back to work when it’s not safe for them, their family, or public health, but often these notices are the result of errors by the state, not by claimants — and sometimes it’s not clear why they’re happening at all. Instead of threatening to collect money in the midst of an economic crisis from workers in need, the state must:
Issue a blanket moratorium on sending cases to collections, garnishing wages or bank accounts, and issuing overpayment notices.
Stop halting payments on ongoing claims, except in cases where a specific adjudication has been made & an individual agent is available to set up a phone call.
2) AUDIT, REVIEW AND CORRECT CLAIMS THAT HAVE FALLEN THROUGH THE CRACKS.
As claims spiked earlier this year, erroneous rejections and incorrect benefit amounts became all too common: even ESD’s own internal review processes have found incorrect initial determinations in about two-thirds of cases where they were made to take a second look. But many workers have been unable to file appeals, and thousands have simply given up. In order to block fraud, the state was able to marshal resources to review all outstanding claims for identity verification with a goal of ensuring no payments were going to fraudsters. We need a similar commitment to review claims for erroneous denials, to ensure all possible relief is going out to eligible claimants:
Affirmatively audit all claims denied since March, even if an appeal has not been filed.
Lift all claimant deadlines to file appeals, initial and weekly claims, and adjudications.
Provide a simple way for workers to flag their account for review by ESD — regardless of whether their claim has been denied, approved, or is in adjudication.
3) PRIORITIZE PAYING BENEFITS QUICKLY.
The unemployment system is oriented to reject claims rather than pay them. Claims can be slowed or even denied as the result of issues as simple as a mismatch in the spelling of the name of a prior employer, a single box checked in error, or an employer that is slow to provide information to the state — and in a time of crisis, these errors can be almost impossible to fix without days spent on hold waiting for an agent. Even when issues are addressed and payments eventually made, this isn’t simply an inconvenience: in an economy where half of households entered the crisis without $400 saved for an emergency, long delays in payments can quickly result in financial crisis.
We need to shift the system to prioritize paying benefits by speeding processing of claims, and letting workers self-certify claims while preventing fraud. We need:
A commitment to assess baseline eligibility for all new applicants within 7 days by reviewing data the state already has on file from quarterly employer reports, and allowing workers to self-certify their eligibility while further determinations are needed. (This is similar to the self-certification the state is allowing from employers applying for relief from unemployment taxes.) If a financial determination cannot be made in that time, ESD can begin automatically paying the minimum benefit while any necessary review is completed.
A plan to address fraud without harming legitimate claimants. ESD responded to the wave of fraud earlier this year by deploying a profiling system that stopped payments to hundreds of thousands of eligible workers and even froze some claimants’ bank accounts. We need ESD to design and publicly present a plan to address fraud without impacting payments to legitimate claimants and without using profiling that disproportionately harms workers of color.
4) accountability & transparency for the system failure.
In order to rebuild confidence in this critical state agency, we need transparent reporting about the state of the system, including:
A clear report of ongoing claims each week — number filed, number paid / not paid, and a breakdown of reasons for non-payment, and a similar breakdown of decisions by ESD on claims filed since March — number of initial claims filed each week; breakdown of denials, adjudications, and redeterminations; reasons for determinations made; and reasons for any payments being halted.
Demographic report by race, gender, age, education, and disability: breaking down determinations, overpayment notices or collections, halts to payments, and length of time before approval, so we can see the real impacts on equity.
Information about ESD’s capacity & staffing, including the number of calls and messages received, answered, and resolved, as well as the number of agents available, and the level of authority each has to assess and correct individual claims.
An independent public accountability hearing before the state legislature so workers can share their experiences and assess the legal changes that must be made to fix the system.
And in the long term, we need a new system that is designed to pay workers — not deny them.
We need those changes to get us through this crisis. But we know that the root of the crisis within the unemployment system is in the design of the system itself: federal & state policies intended to minimize, rather than maximize, the number of workers who receive income support.
That needs to change.
Washington state can lead the way by creating a bold universal, no-fault income support program. A universal program could provide support for hundreds of thousands of workers who have been left out — whether it’s because they are excluded from unemployment by design (like undocumented immigrants and gig workers), or because restrictive policies have led to unfair denials. And by creating a no-fault system that simply pays benefits when workers lose income, no matter what the reason, we can design a system that defaults to approving benefits, doesn’t give employers a veto over workers benefits, and prioritizes getting money into the hands of workers who need it.