Over a month into this crisis and it’s clear Gov. Whitmer’s administration never had a plan for the over 1.2 million who have lost their jobs and that they still don’t.
April 30, 2020
No Plan Or End In Sight For Michigan’s Unemployment Payment Problems
In an interview yesterday with the Detroit News, Michigan’s Unemployment Agency Director Steve Gray admitted he didn’t know whether the agency he runs had made plans with Gov. Whitmer for the increase in unemployment payment demands that a stay home order would bring before it was made.
Today Michigan’s unemployment numbers have increased to 1.2 million unemployed over the past six weeks. While over 180,000 Michiganders still are experiencing problems applying or receiving unemployment payments, Gray says he cannot give a timeline for when those problems will be resolved, because then people would call to complain that the timeline wasn’t met.
Director Gray admits in the interview that the agency does not have enough staff to handle the current volume of 150,000 calls per day, an increase from an average of 5,000. Interestingly, Gray states that it would take six weeks to train new or transferred employees to help with the call volume. The massive unemployment uptick started six weeks ago.
Nearly a month ago, Whitmer’s administration acknowledged there were problems with the unemployment system but as ABC 12 reported Gov. Whitmer “didn’t announce any specific improvements.”
Over a month into this crisis and it’s clear Gov. Whitmer’s administration never had a plan for the over 1.2 million who have lost their jobs and that they still don’t. Gov. Whitmer’s focus on national politics in her bid to be named Biden’s running mate comes at the expense of finding solutions for the ongoing unemployment payment problems in Michigan. – Tori Sachs, executive director of Michigan Rising Action
Michigan Rising Action released a video earlier this week titled Whitmer’s Politics, which focuses on Gov. Whitmer’s own statement from a recent interview saying “politics is everything right now” while Michiganders struggle across the state.