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This unaltered story was originally published at ProPublica.org. [1]
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‘I Cry Night and Day’: How It Took One Woman 8 Weeks to Get Unemployment
Author Name, ProPublica
2020-05-08 00:00:00
Seven weeks after she filed for unemployment benefits, Nadine Josephs was running out of money. The birthdays of her two teenage children loomed, and she was spending her days pleading for forbearance on overdue bills.
Holed up in her apartment in the East New York, Brooklyn, Ms. Josephs, 46, had grown increasingly frustrated since she filed her claim on March 16. And she was tired of hearing assurances from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to the thousands of desperate New Yorkers like her that the checks would be in the mail.
She had checked the mail, her email and her voice mail: No word from Albany in more than a month.
Between negotiations with the phone company and a furniture-rental company, Ms. Josephs tried every avenue she could think of to draw attention to her plight. She called the New York State Department of Labor at all hours, posted pleas on Facebook and Twitter, and even tweeted daily at the governor himself.
“I’m just praying this can be resolved,” she said in an interview. “My back is against the wall.”
Ms. Josephs was part of the first wave of unemployment claimants who overwhelmed the Department of Labor in mid-March. Since then, the state has received more than 1.6 million claims, including many from gig workers and other independent contractors who normally would not have qualified for benefits.
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[1] URL:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/nyregion/unemployment-benefits-ny-coronavirus.html
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https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/
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