Re: Unemployment compensation and self-employment (was Re: Laid Off)

[beelia <beelia -at- gmail -dot- com>]

If you're in California and file a claim with EDD, be prepared for a
bureaucratic nightmare. This agency is totally broken. If you actually do
get your benefits, you are probably one of the lucky few.

I was laid off two months ago and filed a day later online. I knew I was
supposed to get a claim form to fill out and submit it, so I watched my
mail - but got nothing. After a month I tried calling their office (about
50 times) but was never able to get through, even from the local shabby
CalJobs office.

So I sent an email from their "Ask EDD" web site on 1/7 asking why I hadn't
gotten a claim form. I didn't get an answer until today, 1/19:

*Here is our reply:*
Bee you did not return the continued claim forms abandoning the claim you
now must reactivate your claim.
(Apparently there are no punctuation marks on their keyboards.)

So they cancelled my claim - because I did not send them the claim form
that they did not send me. I went to their Facebook page and found someone
else with exactly the same problem. I suspect there are hundreds of
unsent claim forms sitting somewhere in a back office.

So I figured I'd go back to the web site and "reactivate" my application -
but NO. You have to start all over again with a new claim, which required
so much research that it took 4-5 hours the first time. If I knew where
(and if) there is an office, I'd spend the time driving up to
Sacramento instead to get this resolved.

If you google "complaints about California EDD" you will find thousands of
others who seem to be in the same boat. I complained to my state senator,
but doubt he will be able to do anything either.

We have an Eastern European-style bureaucracy in this state. Who's to
blame? I looked on the EDD web site and found the proud, smiling faces of
their "top" executives with lengthy bios listing their dubious achievements.

If I worked there, I'd insist on wearing a ski mask before being
photographed so I couldn't be identified by all the people who have been
f****d by this agency.

 Bee



On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 3:03 PM, Lauren <lauren -at- writeco -dot- net> wrote:

> On 11/13/2012 2:48 PM, Robert Lauriston wrote:
>
>> For someone collecting unemployment insurance, there's at least one
>> other very important part of that document:
>>
>> "For the purposes of this section only ‘wages’ includes any and all
>> compensation for personal services whether performed as an employee or
>> as an independent contractor . . ."
>>
>
> How are "wages" and "compensation" different than "pay" as I discussed?
>
>
>
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