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People with unemployment benefit problems will be able to meet in person with state labor officials on all islands beginning Sept. 7, the day after Labor Day.
Anne Perreira-Eustaquio, director of the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s Spotlight Hawaii livestream show Wednesday that every DLIR office will handle walk-in claimants in the mornings and scheduled appointments in the afternoons.
The in-person meetings are intended to address frustrations from people who have been unable to get through to DLIR’s call center, which continues to receive hundreds of calls each day. Perreira-Eustaquio encouraged unemployed people to apply for call center positions.
For the upcoming in-person meetings, Perreira-Eustaquio said DLIR is anticipating long lines and working on how to streamline the process. Appointments will be able to be made three weeks in advance, she said.
DLIR officials are still working on a system to make appointments at each of the state’s five DLIR offices, spokesman Bill Kunstman said.
The offices will be open from 7:45 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.
It’s unclear how many people are expected to show up in person to get their unemployment issues addressed by a DLIR claims examiner, Kunstman said.
“That’s a good question,” he told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “It’s hard to say. We don’t know how many people are going to come in.”
Peter Yee helps run a Hawaii unemployment updates and support group on Facebook that has 27,000 members. Yee was laid off from Hertz on Maui at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
He could not speculate on the number of disputed unemployment claims DLIR offices are likely to face starting Sept. 7 but said that people with disputes “have been stuck for quite a while.”
Yee said “it’s not unusual” for unemployed people to not receive a first payment even six months after filing an initial claim.
The most common problems are disputes with previous employers over claimants’ unemployment status and over payments of unemployment benefits — disputes that could stretch out over a year.
Others disputes involve former workers who cannot find child care in order to return to work, Yee said.
“A lot of these people are single parents and there are no more spots left in child care for that person’s area,” Yee said. “They just can’t get it. It’s not about the price. They can’t even book it (child care).”
In many cases Yee said people with problems over their unemployment benefits cannot get clear answers because “they (DLIR) just don’t have enough people looking at these claims.”
Asked about the possibility of long lines at DLIR offices starting Sept. 7, Yee said, “Oh, absolutely.”
“The line’s going to be backed out the door at every office,” he said. “It’s not going to clear enough, unfortunately. … They’re still going to need skilled examiners at the counter.”
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