Pritzker protects front-line COVID workers
Governor details unemployment fixes, says idled gig workers will get benefits in a month
Gov. Pritzker has issued an executive order expanding workers’ compensation for any doctors, nurses, police officers, or firefighters who contract COVID-19. (rawpixel)
By Ted Cox
The governor Monday detailed efforts to bolster the state’s unemployment system and to provide benefits to newly eligible workers, while taking steps to protect those on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic in case they fall ill.
At his daily coronavirus briefing at the Thompson Center in Chicago, Gov. Pritzker cited the more than 513,000 Illinoisans who’ve filed for unemployment over the last five weeks, pointing out it’s more than filed for benefits all of last year. Calling it “an unprecedented number of Illinoisans who have lost their jobs to COVID-19,” he nonetheless acknowledged that Illinois Department of Employment Security online systems “haven’t kept pace. This is the painful truth.” He said those online systems were developed a decade ago, in the midst of the Great Recession, in the belief that claims couldn’t possibly get worse than that, but claims were currently running at five times the rate they were over the worst five weeks back then.
Pritzker added that the IDES “web platform has been entirely overhauled,” while more than 500 IDES employees fielding phone calls have worked a combined 6,500 hours of overtime since March 1. More than 200 retired IDES workers have also returned to duty fielding calls at home, as Pritzker pointed out they’re already trained in federally mandated methods of processing private information for those filing claims.
“They’re doing in weeks what normally would take a year,” Pritzker said. He said the IDES online systems is still “a work in progress,” if “much better than it was.”
Pritzker took flak from Republican members of the General Assembly earlier in the day for the failings in the IDES system, but he responded, “COVID-19 knows no partisanship.”
Pritzker said an independent contractor was working on a separate system to process claims for so-called gig workers — including freelancers, tipped employees, and ride-share drivers — idled by the coronavirus pandemic. He added that federal funds for those newly eligible for unemployment were not set to be delivered to Illinois until May, but that the system should be up and running in time for gig workers to start receiving their first benefits in a month.
He blamed federal red tape for delays, charging, “The U.S. Department of Labor attempted to limit this program by creating real regulatory obstacles for implementing it. It has taken the U.S. Department of Labor weeks to issue guidance to the states, and they promulgated confusing and very stringent regulations that attempt to severely limit who can actually qualify.”
Pritzker urged idled gig workers to go ahead and apply now though the current IDES system, and if they’re found ineligible under the old rules their applications will automatically be shifted over to the new system.
Pritzker also imposed an executive order expanding workers’ compensation for doctors, nurses, police officers, and firefighters by ruling that any front-line workers sickened by COVID-19 will automatically be determined to have contracted the illness on the job. He dismissed critics charging that it was a government overreach, saying, “We owe them a debt that we can never fully repay,” and adding that the move is intended to provide those workers as much peace of mind as possible as they deal directly with the pandemic.
Alice Johnson, executive director of the Illinois Nurses Association, welcomed the move, pointing out that 200 doctors and nurses around the world had already died from the coronavirus. “Nurses in Illinois are starting to get sick and infected,” she said.
“My intention is to protect the workers of Illinois,” Pritzker said. “This is what we’re doing right now to protect people.
“In the middle of an emergency, the only way that you have to operate is to protect people as best you can — their health and safety,” he added.
Illinois Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike reported 1,173 new COVID-19 cases statewide in 87 counties, bringing the state total to 22,025, while 74 new deaths brought the toll to 794, but she and the governor said that continues to show progress in flattening out the rate of infection.
“Things look better in the angle of ascent,”Pritzker said, especially in the number of new cases reported Monday. “There’s a leveling effect you can see in those numbers.” Calling that “a very good development,” he added, “You want to see that curve continue in the direction that it’s in, and the reason that it will continue is because people stay at home.”
Pritzker offered no new information on whether the stay-at-home order will be extended into May, or whether public schools will resume classes before the scheduled end of the spring term. “We want to lift these orders as soon as we can,” he said. “But one thing that we have to pay attention to is what direction are these curves going, and what is the advice that we’re getting from again the scientists and the doctors?”
Pritzker endorsed the notion of reopening the economy in phases, but pondered the logistics. Would workplaces and other meeting sites need new capacity limits set to abide by social distancing? As for workers, he added, “Would they feel safe?” Those ramifications have to be studied before taking action.
Ezike also touted the new Call4Calm campaign setting up hotline calls for those made anxious by the pandemic and its economic fallout. “In talking about unemployment,” she said, “it’s important to recognize and acknowledge the toll that it takes on individuals as well as communities — not only financial, but mentally and emotionally. Unemployment has been linked with a number of psychological disorders, particularly anxiety, depression, substance abuse, a decrease in self-esteem.” She urged those struggling with any of those problems to text “talk” to 552020 on their phones, or “hablar” to the same number for Spanish, and they’ll receive a call back from a counselor within 24 hours.
Told that a Chicago poll worker in last month’s Illinois primary had died from COVID-19, Pritzker called for expansion of mail-in voting ahead of the general election in November, saying that during the primary “we were encouraging people not to go to the polls if they could avoid going to the polls. And, indeed, I think that’s exactly the same thing we need to do even more so when we get to the general election. I’m advocating that everybody should be applying for a mail ballot.”