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morning hawaii happy friday it's 10 30 here in the islands and that means it's time for spotlight hawaii i'm yunji de nies joined by ryan kelley tsuji and ryan this morning we have a guest that is always popular that's right we want to bring her right in joining us this morning is the director of the department of land and industrial relations uh good morning to emperor yustaquil thank you so much for joining us this morning good morning thank you for having me again let's start off just with the basics we know that there were a lot of people still waiting for their claims to be paid off and to be settled what can you give us what can you tell us there and update us on the process that you folks are making over there at the department of labor yes so last weekend we reported that we were going to implement the peuc extension which is the additional 11 weeks of benefits for claimants who had exhausted their regular claim as well as their first 13 weeks of puc and some of them their eb 20 as well we did launch that this past weekend and monday tuesday wednesday and thursday night we ran monetary determinations for almost 30 000 claimants and so there are 30 000 claimants out there who are able to move on to the peuc 11 week extension and start being paid and that 30 000 how how much does that chip into the backlog how many people are actually waiting right now we've actually been able to wrap up majority of those who are actually waiting for ap uc payment we do have another 30 000 claimants who have a balance on a a pass claim so on an ep 20 claim or a peuc first 13 weeks of benefits and so we will be adding their monetary determinations to extend those claims eventually prior to them exhausting we also have individuals who have not yet moved on to the first 13 weeks of benefits and are still on their regular unemployment insurance claims but right now we have caught up with all of those who were then waiting for their 11 weeks of payments and had no other issues on their claims and i know there's a bunch of different scenarios so we'll try to be as broad as possible because we can get into the weeds here with every single situation and scenario but for those individuals who maybe were not keeping up and not filing every week and and were sort of waiting for this to come online what would that process look like now for them they would essentially then have to go back and retroactively claim make claims for all those weeks i'm assuming and for those who have done it will they be paid all at once yes so actually there were a lot of claimants who weren't able to file their weekly claims certifications because of the system and where their claims were at at any particular time and so once their monetary runs if they had already filed their weekly claims certifications those weeks will process payments will be made all their back weeks will be processed from january 2nd moving forward as well as their 300 plus up those individuals who were not able to prior file their weekly claims certifications once their monetary runs they can go in they can actually file their weekly claims certifications some of those claimants will receive a error message letting them know that their weekly claims certifications are untimely that's just a normal process our system on recognizes that those claims were not filed earlier and they're untimely they should not worry those claims once they go through process they will those untimely errors will automatically be cancelled and their benefit payment weeks then process so they can get paid i want to bring in a question here rayna b says if we have an extended pending status what does she advise us to do how do we contact anyone so i i would imagine that because this has gone on this long there are a number of people in that situation what's the advice there so there could be many different reasons why a claim is pending and so the best thing for this individual to do is call the convention center call center hotline they i have to tell you that that team has been very successful in cleaning up claims and moving forward claims and getting individuals into the stream that they need to be and so that would be their best course of action would be to call the convention center and make sure that the individual understands why they're calling and help them clean up that claim we also want to bring up the questions surrounding uh overpayment we know that some individuals are stuck in this category of the overpayment status and that is ultimately impacting their ability to move forward or to make any sort of claims and also reporting what they did receive what would you advise for those stuck in this overpayment status so there is a big group of claimants who are stuck in the overpayment pending issue status we have put together a team of individuals who are just hired to learn adjudication we are training up 18 just to work on those overpayment issues and so someone from the office will be reaching out to them to address those issues and hopefully get them cleaned up so they can move on to their first 13 weeks of their peuc benefits there's a broad question here she says what do we do gabriela says what do we do when our year expires on unemployment do we re apply for an initial claim hard to believe now but you know mark march does mark the start of last year's first lockdown and that's when a lot of people were let go so if you've gone through a whole year of this what do you advise gabriella and others so there have already been claimants who have expired their initial 12 months of benefits we are automatically moving out that date so that they can continue to receive their puc or eb 20 payments normally we would not extend a claim more than 12 months but because of these circumstances and these extended benefits we are moving them out so they do not have to reactivate their claim unless they are actually filing for a brand new claim because they have additional earnings to qualify for a new claim we also want to get a status on uh just the pool program itself we know that that is separate and has been in a different independent sort of structure in which to get unemployment out what is the status on those claims how are things moving along there and what can those who will fall under the pool is there any updates in that area right so the poor program is not run off the mainframe it was a brand new system that was spun up just to work on poor claims and as you know we were able to implement the peuc extension that's what they're calling it but it's really just poor additional weeks on pua early on and those claimants have been able to move forward the only glitch with pua is that now the new requirement is that claimants have to prove not just certify that they are still unemployed for covet related reasons and they have to send that documentation into the office through the pool program but it is running much smoother than it than it was in the past so big picture because i know we were talking about a quite a few claims that you now have been able to start to process how big is the backlog right now so majority of the backlog right now is the overpayments um on claims we do have some individuals who had um some glitches up front on initial claims that we're trying to clear up um but the backlog has um decreased drastically and it's really those overpayments that are the issues now and if i could just follow up there how big is the average overpayment and and how does one actually you know is there a way to pay that back and kind of be proactive if you flag that in your own account oh those overpayment tg are just so different for every single claimant i mean employers some employers were reporting late after the fact ppp payments that claimants were receiving and so that could be huge because every single paycheck was being paid but they were still receiving unemployment insurance benefits at the time and so and others it's just the first week you know they incorrectly reported some of them were receiving pto and they didn't know that they were supposed to have reported pto but their employer then reported it and so those overpayment amounts vary greatly depending on the claimant and and can you fix it yourself as the other part of that question no um an individual in our adjudication center has to reach out to them to provide to process to both sides and get it cleaned up want to bring in another question this time from representative lindequoite who represents uh of course the areas of maui county she's asking can you explain more about the operations of the call center is this for ui and pua so if my constituents call they are talking to someone in the state correct so it maybe go through that process and uh if that is local or not yes so you know we did have a contractor handling our call center at one time and in the beginning of january that call center had closed and we opened up a local call center with local staff manning the call center we have a fantastic team from unemployment insurance that are working with these individuals who have come on board these individuals were also unemployed so they understand you know what these claimants are going through and they have picked up extremely quickly and are on board and so what you do is you call into the call center and we have almost 100 call agents call agents on board and we have four different selections you can make you can either go to an individual just to work on your regular unemployment insurance claim another will handle only pool claims the third will handle employer inquiries so we also have a line for employers as and the fourth is to handle any fraud that needs to be reported from employees as well as employers okay um tony braun has just a basic question what's the phone number are there different numbers to reach those different lines or is it just one main number so we're still using the numbers that we had for the original call center and i can give it to you right now so it's 808 762-5751 or five seven five two okay and we will um tony when this is over i'll go back and um put that in the in the notes of the top of the episode so that you have that and of course the unemployment website um has a lot of this information as well but it's nice for people to just have that right off the bat right you know one of the things that we also spoke about was just this transitions every time that we go through this process of getting more support from the federal government with this latest cares act changes have to be made and that is why we've had this delay because of the structure of the mainframe moving forward we know that there are talks about this next round of karex funding that the biden administration is trying to push through are you at all concerned that this could once again impact this department and the way in which you are able to file these claims moving forward knowing that this could be another problem as we head into this next round of support from congress yes all of the states are concerned we actually had a big meeting yesterday in regards to how we want to address any new programs we are reaching out to the congressional delegation letting them know that we would really like to see just extension of weeks instead of programs changing drastically so that we can quickly implement you know these new programs with these extensions we are writing a letter as a group under our organization of all the states asking that they make this process much easier so that we can get the money out to the claimants on a timely manner because we know it's you know extremely needed extremely so we're hoping that they will hear us and they will implement programs that we can implement and get money out as quickly as possible mark's got a question uh which is one that comes up every time you appear on our program but this one's a little bit different with the vaccines already distributed why uh why not why doesn't the apartment department open up in person services even just an appointment given that we are starting to see vaccines and starting to roll out and surely your staff is considered essential uh once your staff is vaccinated will there be more of a possibility for some in-person appointments i think i said many times that i'm really not concerned about the the impact of covet per se you know i know there's ways to protect our staff with the plexiglass and the masks i mean like everyone says they do it in at banks they do it at supermarkets i think our situation is a very very different one until we can get the workload under control my main concern is the safety of a staff of our staff because of the magnitude of individuals you know we'll have thousands of people coming down to these very small local offices individuals who are not very happy you know they're they need to be paid they're anxious they um understandably you know they they're upset because they have not yet received their unemployment insurance benefits and it's the safety of the staff because of the crowds and we wouldn't be able to handle those crowds so until we get the workload under control my my biggest goal is to service as many individual claimants as we possibly can through this mess method right now if we were to take all of our staff and put them on the front lines we would just be handling onesie two z's of claims right now we're handing handling thousands of claims a day um trying to get them assessed and moved on as quickly as you possibly can we have a question here uh from uh lisa who's asking for the proof uh for the proof if you're still employed or furlough usually they contact the hr department for that would they still need to do that or do we need to do that on our own uh you know for this question particularly and maybe for the broader question of that verification process with those who are employed that need to talk to some sort of get some sort of confirmation from an employer what is that process looking like and what should individuals like this do so if it's a brand new claim there are processes in place that allows us to reach out to the employer and receive that information directly from the employer once you've started your claim and you are still attached to an employer that's what we use what we call our weekly low earnings reports that employers report to let us know if they're still attached if they're receiving earnings and whether they are eligible that week for a payment and so there are processes in place for us to take care of that here within the department of labor there was a question earlier i can't find it now because so many questions are coming in and please do keep writing to us but there was a question about if you move once you leave the state of hawaii um at what point are you do you stop being eligible for benefits so just because you leave the state you actually move that does not mean you're no longer eligible so we do ask that you change your address on your account and you follow the instructions for that state so if you have to register with an employment service you go ahead and do that many states have waived that for right now so those it just depends on what state they're in and what the requirements are in that state but they can continue to receive benefits on their claim as long as they're eligible we know that one of the disappointing things in all of this has been fraud and the fact that your department and some of the employees that you work with have had to just uh manage fraud and that takes them away of course from being able to settle some of these claims from individuals that have these issues what can you tell us about some of the fraud that you're seeing right now what are some of the things and the message that you'd like to get across to dispel any sort of misconception or just to clarify some things because of these fraudulent documents that may be going out or information so as of november we have been seeing much more fraud through the regular unemployment insurance system than we had seen in the past you know pool was the one where we had a majority of the fraud in the beginning since march but we've been seeing more and more fraud on our regular unemployment insurance system we have actually implemented some rand new protocols to alert us on in imposter fraud and so we've been able to stop up front much more than we had in the past we are just asking that the public so any individual who receives notification that they filed a claim and had it hasn't filed a claim and those employers who received notification from us letting them know that a employee had filed a claim that they let us know if it is a fraudulent claim so that we could take steps to make sure we we did um stop that claim and that we are not sending out payments so we'd ask the for help from the community if they are notified that there was a claim filed please let us know if it is a fraudulent claim wesley's got a question he says i exhausted my funds on december 12th yet i have friends who exhausted theirs after the 26th who have already had their accounts refilled in what order are people receiving new monetary amounts in and i think that that's sort of a larger question do you do these in the order received or how do you prioritize payment so um we ran the 30 000 those 30 000 were the ones that were able to receive payment because they didn't have an outstanding pending issue they had been waiting and that's what this week was for this week was to run all of those claims so if you're still outstanding i'd ask you to call the convention center because we are up to date on those claims unless you have a pending issue if something else is holding up your claim or you haven't selected a method of payment so maybe we're still waiting to find out whether you want your eb20 to run because if you exhausted on 1212 you then have the choice to choose either eb 20 or the peuc extension of 12 weeks we have a question that has actually come in from christine donnelly who of course works with the honolulu star advertiser and she's asking for some clarification so she says so people who have not yet received any puc will be eligible for all 24 weeks 13 plus 11 or only 11 weeks the extension approved on 12 27 if you can maybe provide some clarity to that so it really just depends on when they exhausted and so if they're still receiving benefits their regular 26 weeks of benefits and they haven't moved on to any of the peuc yet um do you know that the program ends um on the on march 13th with a phase out to april 10th if you still have a balance and receive the payment on march 13th so it really depends where they're at but if they had exhausted their puc i mean sorry they're regular and had not yet received their puc13 but would have exhausted everything prior to the close of these programs they'll get their back weeks i think maybe that's what she's asking so all claimants will receive their back weeks if they're eligible to receive those weeks okay i know we talked about the call center but sandy has a question that i saw repeated a few times which is how many adjudicators are working to settle their cl settle claims that's obviously different than the people who are manning those phone lines correct and so we do have the adjudication team at the calls at the hawaii convention center but we also have our regular adjudication staff at our offices and those that we had brought on once the pandemic had hit and so at the convention center that team is a team of 67 adjudicators a bunch of those are being used specifically to handle overpayments and what is the order in which you are working on those so as the adjudicators are getting this claim are they working just backwards from those uh files that were done say back last year how was that process is it based on when the claim was made right so we are trying to work on the oldest issues first and so those who have issues back to a lot of the peuc overpayments prior to them going to puc has actually gone back to like october september october and so we're trying to hit all of those first before we move forward i know that one of the things that made headlines between the time you last appeared was the fact that you did get money from the ledge to update your mainframe so can you tell us a little bit about how that is going and when we can actually expect to see any changes i think the last time you were here you said it was going to take the contractor over a year to actually do that so what's the status of that upgrade right now so we do have a signed contract with the contractor solid state we have um started the process they have received data from us to convert the data to this new platform we are in the process of hiring three full-time individuals to work only on this modernization project as well as our current staff that we have on board and so we have started that process and you're correct it is going to take them about 18 months to complete this project yeah sometime but uh much needed and and hopefully with that change we won't see a lot of the issues that we see right now i wanted to talk to you about just overall your other role of course as the director of the department of labor uh what are you seeing in terms of just the labor workforce here in the state we know that unemployment of course continues to be a big part of that but are we seeing more people going back to work what are the job numbers overall looking and what are you hearing from employers on that end so yes there's a lot going on here at the department of labor especially with unemployment insurance but with other of our divisions as well and so we have the employers too right that we have to make sure that we provide them with information and make sure that everything's in order so that they can report data for their employees and you know the big thing right now is what the new rate will be for employers coming in 2021 and what those employ how those employers will be impacted and so we um have the legislative session going on right now and we have many bills that are coming through and so we're working through those so that we can mitigate any in problems that employers may have as well as provide additional programs to claimants who want to get back out into the working world and their jobs have been completely lost you know there are many individuals who are still attached and waiting for their employers to reopen but there are also very many individuals who employers have closed permanently and will not be able to go back to their previous jobs and so we're looking at ways to help them move forward to obtain new jobs and new skills and so that they can get back into the workforce so that they can provide for their families we've got another question from jason he says is it better to call the call center or send an email if i'm waiting on pending payment i've been unable to get through for weeks on the phone will anyone answer my email there are a lot of people who say that despite those hundred plus operators that you do have they just haven't been able to get through so what is the best way to actually get uh a response the best way is still calling the call center you can definitely email the email's a lot slower i could tell you um and it's just the circumstances people will email a hundred times in one day the same person they'll just keep sending an email and so it bogs down that email um greatly and so for us to get through these emails are very difficult and so the best way for you to get information is to call the call center we have had very very strong presence there we know that many claimants have been able to get through and those call center agents have been able to actually clean up claims and get claimants paid so the best thing to do is to call the call center you know we know that prior to the pandemic for anyone that has applied for unemployment you would have to go through that process of proving that you're you are actually looking for work and and show proof of that process we know that since the pandemic kid the governor then uh sort of instituted a ruling where that was not required uh what is the status of that in that change maybe going back to having people having to prove that they are looking for work do you anticipate that coming back anytime soon and how that may impact people's claims moving forward so yes the governor has put into his proclamation that we will be very flexible with implementing some of the rules and requirements the federal government um states that we need to follow the us department of labor has also provided with us with flexibilities through the cares act bill as well as the caa the continued assistance act and so we continue to be able to provide flexibility to claim it so that they do not have to continue to look for work right now when that changes it depends on this next bill there's a bill right now right a 1.9 trillion dollar package that the congress is looking at and depending where they go with that if they continue to provide states with flexibilities i'm sure governor ige will continue to provide those flexibilities in his proclamation as well i just want to cover one thing we covered this at the top but i'm seeing this question again so i just i know some people joined us late and this is a really important point to um to clarify here michelle has a question the benefit year will expire by march mostly do we have to file a new initial claim in case they do another extension after this peuc 11. so for folks who missed that answer at the top could you again clarify um since the benefit year for a lot of folks is expiring it really depends on the brand new programs but right now no you do not have to file an additional claim we have been moving out the year-end dates of claims so that they could continue to file and receive benefits on all of the extensions that are coming through we don't know what the new package is going to entail and what it's going to expect but for right now just continue to file like you normally do and we shall we will start moving out those end dates for claimants who are still eligible for benefits so as we wrap up here you know we know that you had mentioned earlier that you've gone through 30 000 of these things in the past four days with that you know that seems like a quite a lot a big acceleration going from zero to that number of course um what do you anticipate in terms of just volume do you anticipate those numbers to stay consistent uh as you process through this that you you will be able to move this along and do you see anything that could potentially hinder this moving forward so we do know that many claimants opted not to take the eb 20 route and to wait for the peuc extension the 11 week extension and so there will be many claimants who then exhaust their peuc extension either majority of them on march 13 or either april 10th if they go through the phase out period those individuals who exhaust their puc extension and we don't hear about any additional peuc extensions then they will have to apply for the eb-20 program i think many claimants don't understand that they'll actually have to do the application go through the application process it's not just provided right when your puc extension ends i'm hoping that they extend the puc again after march 13th and we can just add additional weeks to the claim and no one has to file for the eb 20 program but we'll just have to wait and see there's a i know you have to go soon so we'll just ask a few more quick questions um on says please a time frame of when an adjudicator can call for my overpayment what is the time frame for how fast these folks are getting back i'm sure it depends on how um detailed the case has to be but you know approximately how many cases you said there were about 69 adjudicators how many cases are they able to get through okay so those 69 adjudicators are not all working on the overpayment issues we have lots of other issues as well the voluntary left the misconducts that did not accept work trips all kinds of different child care issues so we have lots of different issues we did we are putting together a team just specifically to work on overpayments but we do have in-house staff who are also working on overpayments i can't give you a time frame but i can tell you that once that team of those new individuals part of the 67 start working on these overpayments it will run much quicker and more and more claimants will start to be called okay and as we wrap up here i want to just provide you an opportunity a final message if you will to those who are still up there still waiting uh trying to get into the call center and any other last messages that you may have for those tuning in here today i just want to express um let everyone know that we are doing the best we possibly can we are continue to do the best we possibly can and service the you know all the claimants on a timely manner i want to thank the staff um i don't think um individuals out there realize how extremely hard the staff is working they come in more hours than not they spend more hours here than they do with their families not only the staff but the volunteers we've had volunteers from every walk of life that came through and helped us we have the hawaii state libraries we have the bar association attorneys who have helped we have had individuals who came back who retired who came back to help us but the enormous support on the state agencies all those individuals who work for the state who came to help us as well i just want to thank every single one of them for doing what they felt they needed to do to help those in the community i also want to ask the claimants to please pick up your phones we're still getting a lot of claimants who do not answer their calls and if you don't answer your calls we can't address your issues or your overpayment issues and so please i know that even i don't like to answer calls that are from um you know unknown number but please just pick up those calls so that we can get in touch with you and get your claim cleaned up and um thank you again for being patient i know people don't like to hear that but i'm very grateful that they're patient and that we will continue to service them the best that we can okay thank you so much we just want to throw this up here dee says please share with ann that we appreciate her team there are a lot of messages here saying that they really appreciate the work that you and the folks at the office are doing so thank you so much for being with here with us we of course have an open invitation for you so hopefully we see you again next month uh with some more good news thank you thank you for having me all right take care thanks all right so we got a a lot of updates there a lot of information and of course as always a lot of questions that have come in about this topic as we know that there are many of you out there that are still waiting we encourage you there was a lot of information that we gave right at the top of this broadcast so if you came in a little late encourage you to go back and watch from the beginning as the director sort of went through that process again explained where they are at and some of the things that they are still working through including issues like overpayment and other issues that may be still bogging down the system but bottom line is if you have one of those claims that you just are pending or need help on i know that it's frustrating for many but you have to just keep trying to call that number as they're trying to get through as many of those calls and individual claims as they possibly can yeah and her tip there was really that calling the call center is better than sending an email and you can see that she said you know one individual will maybe send a hundred emails uh in a day which is understandable because you're so frustrated and you just want to get some attention but that system does sound like it's pretty backed up um unfortunately even though the vaccine is starting to be more widely available to essential workers uh her concern she said is not really the spread of covet 19 per se but just the crowd control that they would have to do and handling uh those claims in person doesn't seem like something that's going to happen anytime soon i know a lot of people have asked for an appointment system similar to what the city has done with the department of motor vehicles something like that but it doesn't sound like the director is open o that anytime soon and we could be looking at some potential issues yet again with this second a third round of funding and support that may be coming down through this biden administration relief package uh she has mentioned that she is going to be talking to members of the congressional delegation to see if they can just extend the current program rather than starting up an entire new program because that is what sort of limits and hinders these departments and she said uh you heard it it's not only us here in hawaii she just had a call with other states that all of them are almost asking the congressional delegations in their own states to make that adjustment so that we do not see this lapse in time and for these departments who have to then uh put together an entire different system and on a mainframe like ours that is very old and not equipped for what we're dealing with right now yeah and although that contract has been approved it's going to be a year and a half before it's up and running and so in the meantime uh more programs would mean more delays the good news there though that she did say in four days processing 30 000 claims that's that's really major and hopefully that does start to clear these roles and get people the money they so desperately need we see all of your comments some of you saying that you can't afford rent right now um and and that is truly difficult and that is why they say they are working just as fast as they can the other important thing that she pointed out and that's why i asked her again twice um is that if you're coming up on a year and traditionally that would be when your initial claim is you know is no longer valid they are extending that now because of the unemployment situation in our state so you do not need to file an initial claim again and she did explain that in detail twice so as ryan said when this is over go back and re-watch the entire program because there was a lot of good information in there yeah i mean when you just look at this i mean we are coming up on a year that you and i have been doing this broadcast ourselves and to think about the year-long process that many of these departments have had to go under and trying to fix and resolve some of these problems a reminder unemployment is just one part of the department of labor they have an entire other uh sectors that they are dealing with and and you heard her comments about just they're also trying to get people to work and for those who are trying to find new jobs so there's a lot that's happening within that department and so we'll continue to try to get and to join this broadcast as we know that many of you uh of course have questions and we want to be able to answer as many questions as we possibly can so thank you for your participation in this and letting us know your questions throughout this process yeah we are going to be back with you on monday with governor david ige always lots to talk about with him as well so we look forward to having that discussion on wednesday we're turning our eye to tourism talking with mufi hanuman who's the head of the hawaii tourism and lodging association with which is a consortium of tourist leaders uh in our state along with jeff wagner who is the head of outrigger so we'll be trying to get a pulse on what's happening in our visitor industry and then on friday ryan uh we'll be talking to the folks over at movers and shakas yeah that's right that's the program that has been started up that has drawn some mixed reviews here in our community that of course is a program that has been flying in people from the mainland to work remotely here in hawaii by giving them incentives over 90 000 people applied for that program we're going to talk to the those who manage that program and to get their thoughts as well as hear from you on what you think if this is a good program many in our business community agree that this is something that the state needs while there's many on the ground here who think that we shouldn't be paying for people to come here we'd love to hear what you think and of course we'd love for you to be involved in the conversation uh have a great and safe weekend we'll see you right back here on monday with governor ige aloha you