35,000 could be waiting to get Employment Security appeal hearing

For another week in a row, the Employment Security Department reported that 20,000 Washingtonians are still waiting on unemployment benefits.

And they are not the only ones waiting on answers from the Employment Security Department.

The Unemployment Law Project, a nonprofit that is suing ESD over the months it is taking to get benefits to people, estimates that 35,000 people are waiting to get an appeal hearing after having their unemployment claims denied.

Andra Kranzler, an attorney at Sheridan Law Firm who is working with the Unemployment Law Project to represent Washingtonians waiting on unemployment benefits, said it can take months for a person appealing a denial to even get a hearing date.

Unemployed Washingtonians still waiting for answers, some told to send money back

“The failure of ESD to exercise its discretion and to follow the law continues to wreak havoc on workers. … ESD continues to treat people as numbers — and they’re people,” she said.

She added that the 20,000 figure from ESD to account for people still waiting for their claims to be addressed is also likely higher, because this number does not include people who had been receiving benefits and stopped getting them due to ID issues after the department accidentally paid over $550 million to fraudsters.

“They’re saying, basically, ‘Oh, if you ever received a payment, your issue has been resolved’ — whether or not it’s still pending. They’re not being transparent,” Kranzler said. “And they’re manipulating the numbers because [ESD Commissioner] Suzi LeVine doesn’t want to lose her job. It’s in her best interest to make the claimants look incompetent; it’s in her best interest to put the blame on the claimants.”

And putting the blame on claimants is monstrously unfair, Kranzler says, noting that questions on unemployment applications can also be hard to understand — and with people unable to get through to speak to an ESD representative, they may make a mistake. A single error on a form can land a person in the adjudication or denial and appeals process, cutting them off from funds for months.

“You can’t really change your answer if you make a mistake — if you don’t understand the question, and there’s not really an easy way to fix it,” Kranzler said. “And it can have really catastrophic harm if you misread the question in any way.”

She also questions why it is taking so long for the department to clear up each individual ID issue.

“I do believe that the agency has the power to remedy most of these things in a timely manner,” she said. “I’ve done a lot of customer service, I’ve worked in a lot of customer service spaces, and I just know the access of the information that they have.”

Kranzler said the ULP gets 100 calls a day from claimants asking for help who are “at their wits’ end,” having not been able to get through to anyone at ESD over the phone or by email for months. She said the stories she hears every day are heartbreaking, as people get more and more desperate for funds.

“To watch what’s happening is so demoralizing, it’s so sad — all of the things I had faith in have been eroded,” Kranzler said. “It’s so sad.”

Unemployment claimants have reported to KIRO Radio that they are selling their possessions and even giving up their homes.

“The whole energy around the stay-at-home order to keep us safe is basically being invalidated by the fact that people cannot just meet their basic living needs. This is a public health crisis, on top of the economic hardship,” Kranzler said. “It’s just so egregious.”

The Employment Security Department has not yet responded to a request for comment on this story.

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