California gig workers, independent contractors to get unemployment help with new website
California’s battered self-employed workforce is being promised a new state one-stop website to make it easier to seek and receive unemployment benefits.
The site, due to be on line April 28, will allow people to certify on their own that they meet the criteria needed for emergency benefits. They would then get their payments within 24 to 48 hours.
And if they need help, the state’s phone lines will be staffed from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day, starting Monday. They are currently open four hours a day Monday through Friday.
“Instead of just putting out applications and having people wait weeks and weeks and weeks for eligibility and for notification around the distribution of payments, we are organizing a very deliberative process in real time” to get money flowing quickly, Gov. Gavin Newsom told a news conference Wednesday.
California Labor Secretary Julie Su said the new website “will apply to those who are self-employed, those who are independent contractors and also to employees whose wage data is not sufficient, their work history is not sufficient to qualify for unemployment insurance and to others who have exhausted their unemployment benefits.”
Easing the process would be a dramatic change from the confusion reported by readers to McClatchy over the past few weeks. Some self-employed people have reported being baffled by the paperwork and unable to get responses from Employment Development Department staff.
That staff, overwhelmed by new unemployment claims since the coronavirus outbreak drove the state’s economy to a standstill, is being beefed up and manned phone hours are being expanded.
Su said hundreds of staff within the Employment Development Department, which manages the unemployment program, have been redirected to focus on the program. Another 300 people from across the state government are being trained to help.
Newsom noted that 500 state workers spent Easter Sunday helping process several hundred thousand claims.
Groups representing self-employed people, gig workers and independent contractors were pleased at the new developments Wednesday, but also were taking a wait-and-see approach.
“We’re watching closely to see how that program rolls out and are hopeful that app-based drivers, who are independent contractors, will soon have a way to access the much needed unemployment assistance Congress passed specifically for gig-workers,” said Stacey Wells, spokeswoman for Protect App-Based Drivers & Services, funded by corporations including Uber, Lyft and DoorDash.
The development was also called “a positive sign” by Katie Vlietstra, vice president for government relations and public affairs at the National Association for the Self-Employed.
She said she was “encouraged by the fact that it will include retroactivity — combined with an efficient turnaround time — to ensure Californians will not miss any payments as this pandemic spreads and the time needed to implement a reliable system.”
Vlietstra said last week that ““People just can’t get through...and even if you do get someone on the line in California, they’re not always sure what to do to process the benefit.”
The state has an estimated 2 million self-employed workers and 3.4 million part-time workers newly eligible for benefits, according to data compiled by the office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California.
The new federal economic stimulus law approved last month will allow those unemployed, or partially unemployed because of the coronavirus crisis and not usually eligible for regular state provided unemployment, to seek new Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefits.
These benefits can cover people unemployed or partially unemployed due to COVID-19 from January 27, 2020 through December 31, 2020 depending on the date of actual impact on their work.
That means an affected worker could get paid retroactively back to the date the virus began to impact his or her work.
This story was originally published April 15, 2020 at 3:08 PM with the headline "California gig workers, independent contractors to get unemployment help with new website."
.jpg)