On hold for unemployment benefits

HARTFORD, Conn. (WTNH) - A man recently laid off was put on hold continuously while trying to apply for unemployment benefits. Getting nowhere on his own, he called News 8 for help.

Jeremy Klusek,34 of Colchester has been in the construction business since he was 18. He has been laid off for the next six weeks, but still needs to take care of three children.

Klusek spent most of the past week trying to get through to the state Labor Department call center.

"I started last Friday, I called a couple of times, didn't get through, so I waited till Monday," said Klusek.

This past Monday, the holiday, was one of the days the Labor Department added extra hours to handle the call volume, but that didn't help Klusek.
      
He spent hours on the phone trying to get through and kept getting a message that the lines were too busy and call back later, so yesterday, he went to the State Labor office in Norwich.

"I walked in the door, the lady smiled; 'how can I help you?'  I said; 'yeah, I can't get through to anybody on the phone, can't do anything on line. She said; 'Well, you got to keep trying back," said Klusek.
      
At any given time, there are at least 80 employees answering the phones at the state's two call in centers.

"It's nothing to do with the equipment, it's working very well, what we are seeing is a very high volume of initial claims coming through, people that need to talk to a personal claims representative in order to complete their claim," said Nancy Steffens of the CT Labor Department.

"Stressful, ya know, you to wait all day and you never know if you're going to get through to somebody," said Klusek.
      
The call in centers are handling over 4,000 calls a day, seasonal layoffs like in Klusek's case usually account for heavy call volume in January. This year they are ten percent higher than normal.

Over an hour wait time is actually better than getting the message that you could call back later.
    
After a full week of trying, Klusek finally got through to a real person, and the entire transaction only took about three minutes.