Senators say Labor Department was unresponsive as they got bombarded by NJ unemployment calls

Erik Hageman lost his seasonal job for Ocean City in fall 2021. As he had done several times before, he filed for unemployment. This time he hit a snag. 

He was unable to finalize his claim because he could not set up ID.me, an additional identity verification step added to the claim process last year. After months of calling the Department of Labor to try to sort out the issue, he finally called his senator. 

Hageman visited Sen. Michael Testa’s office, where a staff member helped him set up ID.me.

“The frustrating part is there is no one to call and talk to," Hageman said. "I understand that you don’t want everyone and their brother calling the Department of Labor, but if you did your jobs and things were being done correctly, you wouldn’t have all these people calling and complaining.”

Hageman isn’t the only person who turned to an elected official for help after running into problems filing an unemployment claim. Testa, R-Cape May, said his staff has worked with “thousands upon thousands” of residents since the pandemic began.

Legislators from both sides of the aisle said the Labor Department has not been responsive as its offices have been bombarded with calls about issues with claims. Many lawmakers say they had to dedicate staff to helping residents and are still working to resolve unemployment claims to this day.

Dissatisfaction reached a boiling point in March when the Senate unanimously approved a bipartisan resolution urging Gov. Phil Murphy to immediately address the unemployment claim backlog and reopen state offices to the public. A week later, Commissioner Robert Asaro-Angelo was called before the Senate Labor Committee.

Asaro-Angelo told the committee the department did everything it could to "serve as many unemployed workers as quickly as possible and ensure the most workers possible are eligible."

"I know none of that matters to the small percentage who have been waiting for their benefits, or to you and your staff, who have been patiently fielding calls," he said. "We care deeply about all claimants, but that small percentage is not representative of the whole picture."

Testa said he's had "three or four staff members" focusing on unemployment.

"Unemployment claims have been about 90% of all calls we had to deal with since the beginning of COVID-19 era," he said.

Testa said that made it “extremely difficult” to help residents who reached out for other issues.

Joseph Lagana, D-Paramus, said his office became a “satellite office” for the Department of Labor. 

“People then began using the legislative offices as really de facto Department of Labor offices and just direct applications were being made to our office,” Lagana said. 

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Angela Delli-Santi, a spokesperson for the department, said "it has been natural" for people to reach out to their elected officials.

"Throughout the pandemic, we have valued our partnership with legislative staff, who we have worked with to resolve hundreds of thousands of unemployment claims," Delli-Santi said.

Since March 2020, the department has distributed "more than $37 billion in benefits to more than 1.6 million claimants," Delli-Santi said.

Also, because staffing is based on unemployment levels, which were low before COVID, the department was "lean" when the pandemic hit, she said.

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Before the pandemic, legislative offices typically assisted residents with claims by acting as a middleman. Staffers reached out to the Department of Labor to get a status update on a claim or to connect constituents with the proper division.

COVID changed that.

Legislators said their staffs were forced to conduct phone, virtual and even in-person meetings with constituents to walk them through the claim process because residents and legislative offices did not get responses from Labor Department employees.

Diana Rochford, a staffer for Sen. Anthony Bucco, R-Morris, said she has helped at least 1,000 people with unemployment issues, either by phone or in person at the Denville office.

"We used to be able to just email the department to help people, but now there is a new system," she said. "We have to enter name, claim number, Social Security number and other things, including a description of the issues according to the claimant. Then the department will send a response at some point later on."

Joseph Griesbach also went to Testa’s office with his unemployment issues because he said the Department of Labor wasn’t “answering calls or texts or emails or anything.”

“It was the worst time in my life trying to deal with unemployment during the pandemic,” he said. “There should have been in-person options somewhere.”

The Department of Labor implemented a new case management system when legislative offices got an influx of calls after the pandemic hit. Delli-Santi said it is for legislative offices to enter, track and manage their referrals to the department.

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Sen. Fred Madden, D-Gloucester, chair of the Labor Committee, said that at first, responses came at an “acceptable pace,” but as the weeks went by, responses from the Department of Labor got worse and the system "was ill prepared.”

Bucco said he had to reorganize his staff to handle the unemployment calls. At times, all three staff members were focused solely on that for “probably 75 or 80 percent of the day," he said.

Lagana's staff shares an office with the 38th District's Assembly members, and when they returned to the office they joined forces "to handle more, and we just became essentially an unemployment office for the Department of Labor for months at a time,” Lagana said.

Delli-Santi said the department "worked cooperatively with every legislative district" but that it has a "responsibility to be responsive to all claimants, not just those who call their legislator."

At the height of the pandemic, she said, the department held "regular one-hour calls with legislative offices" led by Asaro-Angelo.

He would field questions and update staff on benefits changes and eligibility, explain innovations to pay claims more quickly, and outline procedures for resolving claims.

Toll on the staff

Bucco said the stress of handling these calls took an emotional toll on his staff. One worker who was dedicated to helping with claims resigned because of the stress of calls, he said.

Bucco said that when people called his office, they expected answers his staff couldn’t provide. This led to frustration for the residents, who in some cases lashed out at his staff.

“They know they are speaking to the senator’s office; they think, ‘Well why can’t you get a response?’ ” Bucco said. “They get frustrated and then they start taking it out on the staff, and the staff gets frustrated because they’re trying to get the answers.”

"Part of our staff’s duties is to resolve claims referred by legislative staff," Delli-Santi said. "Legislative staff are valued partners, but they cannot resolve unemployment claims issues."

She said the department has received 133,000 legislative referrals since the beginning of the pandemic.

Lagana said the staffers who stepped up “deserve medals for what they did.”

“They worked around the clock to try and get these claims processed, because we had desperate people calling in tears and a lot of this was a very personal issue, and it was handled as delicately as we could with the understanding that every day that passed was a worse and worse situation for that family,” he said.

Rochford, from Bucco's staff, said she doesn't think people realize "how awful this has been."

"The goal is to help people get paid, and it's just a very frustrating process," she said. "We had someone wait 400 days before his claim was resolved. You just feel for these people. It's an accomplishment when they finally get paid."

Katie Sobko is a reporter in the New Jersey Statehouse. For unlimited access to her work covering New Jersey’s governor and political power structure, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: sobko@northjersey.com 

Twitter: @katesobko