Struggles Continue With Filing For Unemployment Online And By Phone
CHICAGO (CBS) -- With an old system and phone calls that go unanswered CBS 2 continues to hear from workers about issues filing for unemployment, including dozens who reached out in the past few days.
CBS 2's Tara Molina took those concerns to Senators Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin.
"It's so frustrating," said Dan Krueger, who tried to file for unemployment online but can't.
So he has been on the phone all day every day with no luck. And he's not alone.
"There's got to be a better solution," he said.
"What I say to the folks who are trying is keep trying. We are doing everything we can," said Duckworth.
"The system has been overwhelmed by the massive amount of federal money coming back to Illinois as well as the massive numbers of people filing for unemployment, but we're going to get through this together," Durbin said.
"We're trying to get workers on the job here to do it as quickly as possible, but we don't want to compromise people's privacy and the integrity of the information they give us," he said on his conversation with Governor J.B. Pritzker on staffing people to help with claims.
So CBS 2 followed up with the Illinois Department of Employment Security. Right now, they have 173 employees working to answer and process calls and 273 processing claims. There are 93 people working as administrative and support staff.
Those 539 employees have worked 6,500 hours of overtime, some through the weekend, but as of Friday night, no new specific solution was mentioned. That's what Krueger said he and so many others need right now.
"They need to put a better system in," he said.
One man CBS 2 spoke with Thursday, who called the Department of Employment Security 75 times that day, kept trying. He was finally able to get through and finish filing first thing Friday morning, more than two weeks after he first started the process.
