Call to Guinn gets action for unemployed woman

Friday, May 28, 1999 | 11:20 a.m.

Apparently the best way to sign up for unemployment these days is to call the governor.

That's what 74-year-old Margaret Cornblum did after almost one month of trying to get through to the local unemployment office and always getting a busy signal.

On March 8 the Employment Security Division of Nevada's Employment Training and Rehabilitation Department implemented a new program in Southern Nevada called "quick claim" where people filing for unemployment call the office rather than going there in person.

Officials say the system has a lot of glitches, one of them being that callers who constantly push the redial button clog up the phone lines and create more delays.

But when the bugs are worked out, spokeswoman Karren Rhodes said, the system will be fast and free of frustration.

"This is a challenge for us as well as our clients," she said. "Believe me, we do empathize with them. We work with it every day. It will get a lot better. We're working as fast as we can.

"Everyone working with this really does understand the frustration. We're frustrated too. Our customers aren't alone in their frustration."

But for now the frustration is eating away at people having difficulty getting through to a live person.

"I would start calling at one minute before 6 a.m. and call all day till the phones quit accepting calls at 5:30 p.m.," Cornblum said.

Wednesday, after more than three weeks, she called Gov. Kenny Guinn's office out of frustration.

"I called the governor's office and a lady there that I talked to gave me the number of the main office, which I called," said Cornblum, who is taking care of a son dying of cancer.

Before noon a case worker in the Las Vegas office had called her.

Although she won't be able to sign up until July 6 because of eligibility regulations affecting her situation, she is gratified that she at least was able to talk to someone and get some answers.

Georgia Neu, artistic director of the Actor's Repertory Theatre in Summerlin, had a similar experience.

"In three weeks I made over 100 phone calls," Neu said.

She will be off for two months while the theater is on hiatus and wants to collect unemployment during that period, though she isn't desperate as many people are.

Thursday she called the employment division's main office in Carson City and got immediate results.

"I got registered because I knew to call the state office," Neu said.

The state office called the local office and a case worker called Neu and signed her up over the telephone.

"They called me today at 12:30 and signed me up. They couldn't have been nicer," she said. "Once I talked (to the case worker) it was easy as pie."

She was signed up dating back to May 9, when she started calling.

"I think the people working in the unemployment office are doing the best they can," Neu said.

But, she observed, that doesn't make the process any less frustrating for many people who are in desperate situations.

"A lot of people out of work are under a lot of stress," she said.

Alan Herman, an unemployed cab driver whose plight prompted a story in the Sun this week about the problems with the new filing system, said two hours after talking to a reporter he was contacted by a case worker who signed him up.

This after 10 days of frustration in trying to get through.

"They told me (Thursday) the check is in the mail," Herman said.

Each day about 400 calls get through on the system, Rhodes said. The Southern Nevada unemployment office serves 9,229 customers and averages about 1,700 new claims a week.

The average time on hold for those who get into the system was 26 minutes last week, but that has improved to 21 minutes this week as workers become more proficient with the new system, Rhodes said.

Between 90 and 100 people a day who make it through to the system hang up after waiting on hold an average of 3 1/2 minutes.

Once contact is made with a claims taker, it takes 11 minutes to file a claim.

After dialing 486-0350, a caller gets a recording instructing them to punch a number for either English or Spanish. The next command is to punch "2" to file a new claim. For those who don't get through, the recording tells the caller that there has been a heavy volume of calls and to call back later. The call is then terminated.

The system is designed to allow only 20 calls to be "stacked" so that people are not stuck on hold for long periods waiting for a claims officer to assist them, Rhodes said.

All states eventually will use a new "quick-claim" system, which is part of a broader system that will allow customers not only to file claims but also to use the telephone to determine how much money they have in their unemployment account.

Rhodes said the portion of the system that allows people to access information about their accounts by phone was tested for over a year in Northern Nevada without problems.

Many of the people now having trouble getting through are in the Las Vegas area.

But Rhodes said equipment glitches are being worked out.

"There's just a combination of problems -- hardware, software, the learning curve," Rhodes said.

Last week, she said, the system crashed for a period of time, and there are problems with insufficient power being supplied to adequately run the new equipment.

And there is a personnel shortage, created by the state hiring freeze.

Rhodes said 11 or 12 claims takers are working the telephones at any given time between 6 a.m. and 5:30 p.m.

She said more are needed, even though "We have claims takers in training right now."

Rhodes said a team was sent to Utah this week to observe how that state runs its quick claim system.

"We're going to look at everything. We're asking them what works for them and what doesn't," Rhodes said. "It's going to get better."

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