Oregon unemployment-claims staff says agency not protecting them from coronavirus

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In the past couple of weeks, tens of thousands of Oregonians have sought unemployment benefits with unprecedented urgency.

But the workers vetting those claims worry the Oregon Employment Department has not put strict enough measures into place to prevent them from getting the new coronavirus.

The agency operates call centers in Bend and Beaverton.

Workers there have been spending their days fielding a tsunami of requests from at least 76,000 Oregonians who have been laid off, or had their hours cut, as businesses shut their doors or scale back their operations.

Three workers spoke with the Statesman Journal on the record about their concerns.

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“We're not getting treated the same as the public and they expect us to help the public,” said Leslie Vincent, an adjudicator at the Beaverton call center.

Vincent’s job is to determine whether people seeking unemployment benefits are eligible for them. There are about 90 adjudicators between the two call centers, she said.

Roughly 70 other people working at the call centers are specialists who answer the initial incoming calls from Oregonians seeking unemployment benefits, said Vincent, who is also a steward for her local union.

Those workers need to be in the office to answer calls, she said.

To address the high volume of claims, the state is also training tax auditors to process claims coming in on the phone and over the internet, Vincent said.

Proximity is a concern

Adalia McDonald, a fraud investigator at the Bend call center, said workers there share cubicles in close quarters — not even three feet apart.

The latest health guidance from state and federal officials says people should maintain at least six feet of distance from each other to avoid getting sick.

McDonald said she has also raised concerns about the office’s ventilation system and the shared cubicles.

“When one person gets sick, then everybody gets sick,” McDonald said, “Because there's nothing to separate us from anybody else in any way, shape or form.”

Gov. Kate Brown has ordered that businesses that don’t provide essential goods like groceries and can’t maintain safe social distancing practices must close.

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“If businesses are not complying with this order, we will shut them down,” Brown said Monday.

Brown has also directed state agencies to allow workers to telework and work from home “to the maximum extent possible.”

Upper managers and human resources officials have told workers handling unemployment insurance they cannot do their jobs remotely, according to emails obtained by the Statesman Journal.

Telecommuting was not permitted for unemployment insurance workers, who were deemed essential, according to an email Lindsi Leahy, deputy director for benefits at the division handling unemployment insurance, wrote to workers March 20.

“This is primarily due to technology constraints with our current equipment and legacy system,” Leahy wrote. “To accurately and efficiently perform the work required of the (unemployment insurance) Benefits program, employees need to have access to our phone system.”

Workers were allowed to appeal the “essential” designation based on health conditions, Leahy wrote.

But, Vincent asserts, the bulk of claims are coming in online. She thinks that the agency’s adjudicators and fraud investigators could do their work remotely.

“There's no reason we can't work from home processing internet claims,” Vincent said. “Very rarely do we have to call the person. And if we do, we can call them from our phone with questions.”

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Workers say some can work at home

Steve Demarest, president of Service Employees International Union 503, which represents the call center workers, agrees the agency’s technology limits how many workers can work remotely.

“The workers who are the initial claims takers, none of them are requesting to telecommute that I'm aware of,” Demarest said. “They understand that the way the system's set up, they need to be at the office to deal with the incoming claims that come in online or by phone and do that initial processing.”

But adjudicators, he said, believe they can work at home. Demarest, who is on leave from the employment agency to serve as SEIU 503 president, has worked as an adjudicator there in the past.

Demarest believes if more protective gear becomes available — state officials are trying to prevent shortages of masks and gloves for health care workers — the employment department could provide it to workers in the office to prevent the virus' spread.

Calls made to claimants and businesses “cannot be made from a state issued cell phone or personal phone” because they must be part of the official record of the claim, Leahy, the benefits deputy director, wrote in the March 20 email to workers.

But Demarest says that recording those calls is a “relatively recent” practice.

“That seems to be an example of something that could be waived or modified in order to protect people's health and to preserve the workforce so they can do this work,” Demarest said.

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Leahy also told workers that the state’s network connectivity has been inconsistent for those state workers who have been working remotely.

“With an unprecedented number of unemployment insurance claims filed, we need to have reliable access to the ... Mainframe, Imaging, and other systems and tools to complete our work in a timely and accurate manner,” Leahy wrote.

Telework requests denied

Adam Lane, an adjudicator in the Beaverton office, maintains there’s a way to do his job remotely.

“All the work that we do, it is absolutely possible to do it remotely,” Lane said. “It may be impractical because the agency has not seen fit for a number of years to get the infrastructure in place.”

Lane said he filed a request to telework with the employment agency, which was denied. He then appealed that decision to the state’s central administrative agency, the Department of Administrative Services, which officials there denied. After he asked the administrative agency to reconsider their decision, an official upheld the denial.

He provided copies of the administrative agency’s two denials to the Statesman Journal.

In the second denial, state labor relations manager Erin West wrote that the phones adjudicators use need to be plugged into the state’s network to connect. There’s no easy way to create a secure network that a phone can plug into remotely, West wrote.

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She also said that adjudicators’ correspondence could not take place solely by secure email because people who don’t have a computer need a way to contact the agency by phone.

Instead of shifting workers to telecommuting, the division has “split” call center shifts.

Starting Friday, March 27, there is an early shift and a late shift, which is supposed to keep fewer employees working in the office at the same time, according to an email of the announcement obtained by the Statesman Journal.

The early shift is from 5:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., and the late shift goes from 2 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.

McDonald is unsure how that change is going to be helpful to Oregonians.

“I don't know how that would help our customers because it's not like we're going to be turning on the phones any earlier,” said McDonald, who is also chief steward for her local union.

“I don't know if they plan on keeping them open any later," she said. "But we're not going to be able to contact claimants and business owners between 5:30 and 8:00 in the morning. And we're not going to be able to contact them after 8:00 at night. So I don't feel that it really makes sense.”

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Agency stresses data security

A spokeswoman for the employment department, Gail Krumenauer, said she could not answer a list of questions from the Statesman Journal on Friday.

Krumenauer said leaders at the agency were working with union leaders. But she said the state needed to keep claimants’ information secure.

“I do know that in order to process unemployment claims, we need secure ways to do that,” Krumenauer wrote in an email. “We are talking with people about their social security numbers, their earnings. We are committed to protecting the private information of those claiming unemployment benefits.”

Krumenauer said the agency has taken actions to socially distance and keep employees safe.

“We are opening up some currently vacant training and other spaces in our buildings to allow more distance, and spreading out shifts so fewer employees are in our contact centers at the same time,” Krumenauer wrote. “We are also pursuing more computer and phone technology supports.”

She did not provide details on what those computer and phone technology supports were.

Meanwhile, employees worry that some people could have already been sickened by the new coronavirus.

Vincent said in a phone interview that she has been out of the office with administrative leave pay while battling exhaustion, a sore throat and headache.

“There's quite a few people that have the same symptoms and they're out and have been out,” Vincent said. “And I have some of the symptoms now too. I don't know if I have it.”

Claire Withycombe covers state government for the Statesman Journal. Contact her at cwithycombe@statesmanjournal.com, 503-910-3821 or follow on Twitter @kcwithycombe. Support local journalism by subscribing to the Statesman Journal.