Fact check: Did Gavin Newsom tell the whole story about state unemployment phone lines?
Gov. Gavin Newsom, his state agency under siege from angry workers who lost their jobs and can’t reach anyone to help, pledged a big improvement to California’s embattled unemployment system this month: To “expand the hours of our call center.”
He left out some details.
Getting through on the phone has been the biggest complaint from dozens of readers who have contacted The Sacramento Bee since the coronavirus outbreak sent the state’s economy reeling.
Newsom offered assurances to constituents at his April 10 news conference: “Since 2013 our call center at EDD has gone from 8 a.m. to just noon. We’re now expanding those hours,” he said. “I have directed her (Labor Secretary Julie Su) to do at least till 5:00, 8 to 5, but we believe we have the capacity to go even further. Until further notice, we at least have the new expanded hours happening very shortly. Hundreds of additional personnel are being deployed to make that happen.”
Here’s what the governor didn’t say:
▪ The call center that handles specific, more complex questions about individual claims and payments has not changed its hours. It remains staffed five days a week for four hours a day.
▪ The state did create a new call center, staffed 12 hours a day every day, on April 20, but its mission is to answer general and technical inquiries.
“It’s not case-specific. It’s a (way to) talk to a live person in order to get some of your questions answered,” said Labor Secretary Julie Su in a Facebook Live chat Friday. She called it a “general support line.”
▪ Despite huge increases in staffing, many readers have been telling The Bee this week that they still have a difficult time reaching anyone. Newsom Wednesday acknowledged that people are frustrated. The state has been plagued by an outdated computer system that state officials have said was not ready to handle such an overwhelming number of jobless applications.
Those readers tend to want information about their very personal situations.
They may be self-employed workers who have never applied for benefits before. Or have been disqualified for benefits in the past or been rejected in the past. Or they have no computer, or receive retirement benefits but were laid off while working recently.
“Every time I try to call EDD, I can’t get through to talk to anyone to ask what happened to my claim. I get disconnected,” a reader wrote during the Bee’s Q and A this week on unemployment benefits.
“I have tried to call daily numerous times, tried sending emails, call my local Calworks office. What do I do?? I’ve tried everything I can think of,” said another reader.
Newsom addressed the situation at his news conference Wednesday. “I am deeply aware that many of you tried to access that system online, in person and struggled to get in,” he said.
He noted that the system has handled 3.7 million claims since March 12, and went from 2,500 applications a day a few months ago to 235,000 applications Tuesday.
“Not an excuse. We have to meet the moment. We have to provide more support,” he said.
Newsom’s press office referred The Bee’s questions about the state’s unemployment efforts to the state Labor & Workforce Development Agency.
Newsom’s assurances
When Newsom announced the expanded phone line April 10 at a news conference, he explained, “We have hundreds more staff that are also now being reprioritized...and that is to expand the hours of our call center.”
On April 15, he issued an executive order directing Su to initiate “staffing call centers at least during the hours of 8 a.m. through 8 p.m.” Su appeared at Newsom’s press conference that day to announce the new hours would begin April 20.
“I just wanted to acknowledge that there is frustration in California over unemployment insurance benefits and the governor’s executive order today is going to allow us to open up the hours of our call center so that those of you who are seeking a live person to talk to to get help will be able to do that much more easily,” she said
“We will be seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. beginning Monday,” Su added.
The same day, a mention of a new call center came in a press release from Newsom’s office. The line for more complex questions about individual claims and payments remains on its 8 a.m. to noon schedule.
Loree Levy, an EDD spokeswoman, told The Bee that experienced department representatives who “have gone through months of training on the complex task of filing and processing UI claims are helping people on that initial phone line in the morning and are urgently needed in the afternoons to help process claim work that has come in and get payments made.”
She said the new help line has proven “very important for serving these needs and relieving demand on the claim filing phone line.”
The new line, Levy said, will continue to expand its capacity.
Secretary Su on the phones
Su herself elaborated on the differences between lines as she answered consumers’ questions April 24 in a Facebook Live chat, as consumer frustration continued to mount.
She said she wanted to “clarify a few things about the call center.”
Ideally, Su said, there would be one line “with clear streams where you could get to the person who could help you with your situation.”
She described three separate lines. One is an automated self-service line, available 24 hours a day, that answers more general questions.
The new line is a “general support line….we are at this point inundated with phone calls.”
Staff there can “answer general unemployment program questions, it can provide some technical help on your registration, you can do password reset, you can get your EDD account number on that one and you can get instruction on how to use UI online.”
She said representatives at this point on that line do not have access to all of a person’s individual claim or payment information.
“That’s not an excuse for not developing the capacity to answer the phones the way we need to,” she said, “and we are continuing to work on that.”
The third line is the 800 number open four hours a day, five days a week. Su compared using it to visiting an EDD office for help.
“That’s where the most complex work is done,” she said, adding that the agency is trying to expand the service.
This story was originally published May 1, 2020 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Fact check: Did Gavin Newsom tell the whole story about state unemployment phone lines?."
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