Here & Now

Fallout from Errors on Unemployment Claims

Frederica Freyberg:

The latest weekly jobless claims in Wisconsin show just under 4,000 first time filers and a little over 21,000 continuing claims according to the Department of Workforce Development. This is a far cry from during the depths of the pandemic, when hundreds of thousands of people sought unemployment benefits with long wait times of weeks and months for payment. The Evers administration is trying to fix what it calls an antiquated unemployment insurance computer system, but according to our next guest, the process is still a mess, leaving thousands of filers facing warrants for overpayments. Victor Forberger, a labor and employment attorney, joins us from Madison. Thanks very much for being here.

Victor Forberger:

Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

I want to talk about those warrants in a minute, but DWD says on its website that the average amount of time claimants wait to get paid is about 50 days. But then they say that’s a cumulative number since March of 2020. What are the actual wait times like right now?

Victor Forberger:

It’s hard to tell because it’s what I’m seeing with various claimants, they win decisions or they get initial determinations, and then they wait and they call up and I tell them to call up and they’re just told, it has to go to manual processing or it has to be processed. So the data you’re looking at is for these cases to be adjudicated and then a decision to be issued. That doesn’t mean somebody is necessarily going to get paid. That just means a decision is issued. There are waits then for appeals, for hearings, and right now, because many, many cases were lost at the hearing stage and then appealed to the Labor Industry Review Commission, they have a 6 to 12 month delay right now. So —

Frederica Freyberg:

So it’s a lot of hurry up and wait type stuff when you get to that level of it. But going back to kind of just the normal process at the height of pandemic job losses, the system obviously did not hold up under the crush of claims. Have there been improvements in the system and the process, especially as unemployment is now so low?

Victor Forberger:

Not that I’ve seen. There’s still huge delays and problems because it’s still an incredibly difficult and complicated process. People are not able to follow it because it’s asking them to have a familiarity with unemployment law as if they were an attorney or an experienced claim filer that’s been doing this for 20 years. And they’re not. And so they’re confused and they can’t get straight answers, and they’re making mistakes then.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what you say you’re dealing with as an attorney working on behalf of clients getting jobless benefits is that the state is cracking down on claimants for overpayments, which you say are often unintended mistakes made on that application. How big is this crackdown?

Victor Forberger:

It is tremendous right now because it’s so easy to make a claim filing mistake. And then there are various things the department does that just — it’s not following its own law, and so people are being penalized. And the amounts are huge, especially when the department, because — well, because the department presumes a claim filing mistake is intentional, it then presumes it’s fraudulent. And so the penalties that were enacted back in 2013 and 2014 make these kinds of mistakes enormous. And the department has an incentive because they pocket 25% of the administrative penalty. So if you owe $10,000, $2,500 of that is going into the program integrity fund.

Frederica Freyberg:

How easy is to make mistakes on the application for unemployment?

Victor Forberger:

It’s — I mean, there are compound questions, so a question that’s really tricking people up right now is, if you are — were applying for PUA benefits, you’re self-employed. The question was, are you self-employed or — no, the question is, are you receiving working and covered employment or are you self-employed? People look at the second part of that question and they’d answer, well, no, I didn’t have any self-employment work that week. So they might have been working at 7-11 that week for 10 hours.

Frederica Freyberg:

You’re making it sound as though this is by design on the part of this state agency. Do you think it’s by design or it’s a bug of what the Evers administration calls an antiquated system?

Victor Forberger:

Well, this isn’t really doesn’t have anything to do with the computer system. It has to do with the questions that are being asked. And so how you ask those questions and how you frame those questions, that’s — as you’re a reporter, so you need to write stories in clear English, speaking clear English so people understand. That’s what claim filing should be. The model claim filing language is supposed to be at a 6th grade level. And if you look at the claim filing questions, it’s very obvious, it’s full of legalisms, and abstract concepts. So it’s very difficult for people to understand how am I supposed to understand what am I supposed to report? You’re supposed to report your vacation pay. What if you’re paid PTO? What if you’re paid flex time? Where do you put that? And if the employer puts it in a different category, well, then now you’ve misreported your wages.

Frederica Freyberg:

And so the solution here in your mind, one of them, would be to rewrite these questions in plain language?

Victor Forberger:

You’ve got to simplify and make this as easy as possible, and there are basic concepts we all know, like you start with the general and then you get specific because people will be familiar with general ideas before you start asking them specific. The claim filing process starts with the specific. You know, you’re asked specifically, did you get holiday pay? They’re not asking you, can you get any wages at all this past week? That’s not a question being asked.

Frederica Freyberg:

It does sound complicated and there’s more to talk about with this but for now, Victor Forberger, we leave it here. Thank you very much.

Victor Forberger:

Thank you.