HR0226 102ND GENERAL ASSEMBLY

HR0226 LRB102 17659 MST 23503 r

HOUSE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES) is directed by State law (20 ILCS 1005/1005-45) to help the prosperity of Illinois' laboring men and women; and

WHEREAS, IDES is directed by State law (20 ILCS 1005/1005-100) to operate a statewide network of public employment offices; and

WHEREAS, IDES has traditionally operated public employment offices throughout Illinois, where job-challenged Illinois residents can go for immediate and direct assistance; and

WHEREAS, These IDES public-access public employment offices closed down "temporarily" in March 2020, due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic and, as of March 2021, have remained closed; and

WHEREAS, Due to the same pandemic, the need of the people of Illinois for IDES advice and counsel has sharply increased; at calendar year 2020 year-end in December 2020, Illinois nonfarm payroll employers reported employing 419,100 fewer people than in the previous year; and

WHEREAS, These numbers have generated a statewide unemployment rate of 7.6% in December 2020, with more than 468,300 Illinois residents estimated to be unemployed and actively searching for work and additional tens of thousands of Illinois residents having dropped out of the labor force in despair; and

WHEREAS, This six-figure total of Illinois individuals includes men and women who need help filing for unemployment insurance benefits, request counsel in searching for new employment, or require additional and further assistance for a wide variety of pandemic-related unemployment problems; and

WHEREAS, Under current IDES policies, there are no physical locations that these people can visit to get this help; and

WHEREAS, People with standardized problems are expected to interact with a computer robot, the "IDES assistant", on the IDES site, but not everyone has access to a computer and, furthermore, constituents state that the webpage robot puts people into a spiderweb and does not answer their questions; and

WHEREAS, People with additional questions and requests for assistance are supposed to call a IDES hotline phone number, [phone], but our constituents report that the hotline, when used by Illinois residents who need help, generates a cold, automated response; persons who call into the hotline with a problem are told to deposit their names, phone numbers, and identifying information on a segment of electronic recording and to wait for a response; and

WHEREAS, In a report broadcast on Chicago's WBBM-TV/Channel 2 on Monday, March 8, IDES reported that as of the most recent reporting period 155,765 calls from Illinois residents were sitting in its callback queue and they had not yet called back any of the names on this lengthy list; and

WHEREAS, At the current rate of callbacks, persons who left their names and phone numbers in IDES' callback queue cannot expect to get a return call until more than one month has passed since depositing a request for assistance, including many urgent requests for immediate help; and

WHEREAS, In an Illinois House public hearing carried by video technology under conditions of pandemic social distancing held on Thursday, March 4, senior officials of IDES confessed to House members that their employees have not been able to respond to Illinois public requests and pleas in a timely manner; and

WHEREAS, Many of the problems represented by these 155,765 unanswered phone calls are complex problems requiring an Illinois resident to find and submit one or more pieces of information written on a legal form, one or more coded passwords, one or more pieces of personal secure identifying information (such as a Social Security number), or some combination of these elements; and

WHEREAS, When problems like these are addressed over an audio link, more than one phone call is often required to deal with these requests for assistance, leading to a significant number of currently open IDES case files and unresolved issues; and

WHEREAS, Other Illinois State agencies also do work for which face-to-face interactions are desirable or necessary and, recognizing this, have taken steps to partially reopen their offices under pandemic conditions of social distancing; examples include the Department of Driver Services within the Office of the Illinois Secretary of State and the Family Community Resource Centers operated by the Illinois Department of Public Aid; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE HUNDRED SECOND GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that recognizing the unique circumstances of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, we call upon the Illinois Department of Employment Security to immediately reopen their public-access public employment offices to provide face-to-face help to Illinois residents who urgently need assistance; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we call upon all of the other departments of the State of Illinois to provide IDES with advice, technical assistance, and guidance on how to safely reopen public-access office spaces under current conditions; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we support the working people of Illinois, whether currently employed or not, including the working people of IDES; we recognize the stressful circumstances of operating a publicly accessible office in a time of pandemic; and be it further

RESOLVED, That suitable copies of this resolution be delivered to Governor JB Pritzker and IDES Acting Director Kristin Richards.