Unable to get unemployment answers, she drove to Raleigh for a one-woman protest
Fed up with a lack of answers about why she suddenly stopped receiving jobless benefits in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, a woman drove from Greensboro to Raleigh to stage a protest outside the state unemployment office Thursday.
“I know it’s not just a me problem,” Catrice Otengo said. “I know there’s other people out there facing the same thing.”
Due to the record-shattering spike in job losses because of business closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, the state has tripled the number of people working in the unemployment office. But still, there have been complaints of hours-long waits to get through on the phones, and website glitches or administrative errors that have frustrated people around the state.
Some told The News & Observer they had to wait two months to get their benefits, even though state officials say it usually should take 14 days or less.
As of Friday, according to state officials, just under 6,700 people’s claims were still pending after at least two months. That’s about 0.6% of the million-plus people to have filed for benefits so far, and officials say they hope to have all those claims resolved by the end of June.
In the past three weeks, they said, they have resolved 36,000 claims from March, April and May and credited improvements made at the Division of Employment Security office to be more customer-friendly.
“DES has made several customer service enhancements to provide quicker and more efficient responses to claimant inquiries or requests,” DES said in Friday’s press release.
Benefits dropped to zero
Otengo, however, faces a different kind of problem. She’s not waiting for an initial approval. She got approved, and did get one check from the state.
But then she started working a couple more hours per week, and all of a sudden the benefits dropped to zero. She doesn’t think the slight increase in her hours should’ve stopped her benefits entirely, she said, but can’t get through to anyone at the state who can explain the decision to her.
She does have a work-from-home job lined up to start soon — but she’s also on the verge of being evicted and having her car repossessed, she said. If that happens, she wouldn’t be able to do that new job.
“I can’t afford not to fight,” she said. “If I didn’t have so much against me right now I wouldn’t have gone to Raleigh.”
But while she was outside the state unemployment office protesting Thursday, she said, nobody walked outside to talk to her. Nobody driving in or out of the parking lot stopped to ask her about why she was protesting, either. The only person who spoke to her, she said, was a police officer who asked her to leave — but then did help her out after she explained why she was there.
The officer said she could stand right outside the property, just not in the parking lot, then went inside to convey her frustrations for her. She said she appreciates the help but still wants to talk to someone who can actually explain why she hasn’t gotten any benefits in the past six weeks.
On Friday, nobody from the unemployment office had followed up with her either, Otengo said.
But state officials Friday did release a new update on their work statewide. Of the more than 1 million people who have applied for unemployment — one in every five people in the state labor force — they said that 94% have had a decision made in their case.
Around two-thirds of them, 712,000 people, have been approved for benefits and have received a combined $4.1 billion.
A week ago, officials also announced they had improved the online dashboard that people with unemployment claims see when they log in to the state website. And they’re working hard to deal with the tricky cases still remaining, said Pryor Gibson, the head of the unemployment office.
“DES has a dedicated team of experts to focus solely on resolving the oldest and most complicated claims,” Gibson wrote on June 12 when he announced the new features.
Gov. Roy Cooper put Gibson in charge on May 27, the same day the previous head of that office, Lockhart Taylor, was reassigned to a different job in state government.
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