Upcoming testimony before a Senate Committee

Update (28 Jan. 2021): TMJ4 is perhaps the only media outlet in the state that actually describes what happened at the hearing over current problems with unemployment claims and how any computer updates are not a viable solution for those currently dealing with this mess.

I am scheduled to testify before the Senate Committee on Economic and Workforce Development this Wednesday, January 27th, at a public hearing starting at 10am, concerning Wisconsin unemployment.

Given the general lack of information about what is actually happening with the unemployment crisis, I have provided the committee a 199pp. PDF of the materials and a 3pp. letter describing those materials.

WisEye will be carrying the testimony live.

Some of the charts and tables in the informational packet include:

The year of 2007 should be considered a base year for how a healthy unemployment system in this state should function.

Notice that during the Great Recession first payments of benefits for the most part continued to be timely.

Except for Minnesota, Wisconsin has had fewer PUA claims that many other states and has paid far fewer PUA claims as a percentage than other states. New Jersey, like Wisconsin, has a COBOL mainframe for their unemployment claims. Yet, New Jersey’s handling of PUA claims shows incredible success compared to Wisconsin.

Update (27 Jan. 2021): My testimony and the testimony of others, including the Department, is available here. My testimony starts around 11am (an hour into the hearing), and runs 30-40 minutes. Here is a recap of my remarks about how disabled workers are being treated:

$1.1 billion is the amount available in the unemployment trust fund at the end of December 2020. $1.1 billion that is not helping anyone but just sitting in a bank account.

Wis. Stat. § 108.01(1) (emphasis supplied) provides:

Unemployment in Wisconsin is recognized as an urgent public problem, gravely affecting the health, morals and welfare of the people of this state. The burdens resulting from irregular employment and reduced annual earnings fall directly on the unemployed worker and his or her family. The decreased and irregular purchasing power of wage earners in turn vitally affects the livelihood of farmers, merchants and manufacturers, results in a decreased demand for their products, and thus tends partially to paralyze the economic life of the entire state. In good times and in bad times unemployment is a heavy social cost, directly affecting many thousands of wage earners. Each employing unit in Wisconsin should pay at least a part of this social cost, connected with its own irregular operations, by financing benefits for its own unemployed workers. Each employer’s contribution rate should vary in accordance with its own unemployment costs, as shown by experience under this chapter.

So, money to pay rent and groceries, to dine out in restaurants, just to spend on consumer goods — WHEN there is a state-wide lack of consumer spending because of a worldwide pandemic — is not going out to the unemployed workers in this state who need it.

One group in particular has been hit hardest — the disabled.

Wisconsin is one of only two states that denies unemployment benefits to those who receive SSDI benefits. This eligibility ban was premised on the belief that only 50 workers would be affected by it.

That belief was not true. In any given year, there are 150,000+ SSDI working in Wisconsin (for 2019, see Table 27 at this link). To put that number in perspective, in the December 2020 jobs report for Wisconsin, there were 128,100 construction workers in this state, a ~22,000 short of the workers who receive SSDI benefits.

Wisconsin is allowing its employers to lay off these 150,000+ disabled workers and face no consequences for such layoffs. If unemployment was automobile insurance, then Wisconsin would exactly be saying that drivers could run over disabled people without any consequences to their auto insurance premiums. This is obscene.

So, a $1.1 billion unemployment trust fund has been built up on the backs of 150,000+ disabled workers in this state who by law cannot receive those unemployment benefits, against this explicit provision in Wis. Stat. § 108.01(1) (emphasis supplied):

Whether or not a given employing unit can provide steadier work and wages for its own employees, it can reasonably be required to build up a limited reserve for unemployment, out of which benefits shall be paid to its eligible unemployed workers, as a matter of right, based on their respective wages and lengths of service.