Dear colleague,
We’re writing only to faculty participants in work-sharing who have to apply for unemployment by phone because you don’t have a New Jersey state ID. If your claim status does not yet read “Filed” (you can check that by clicking here) and you have not spoken to an NJDOL agent (whether because you missed a call or didn’t get a call), we need you to fill out this Google form today (May 5).
As you know from our messages for the past week, the New Jersey Department of Labor decided—without warning us—to have agents call faculty on the list of those who don’t have a New Jersey state ID. After a rocky first day, we got the system improved, and many faculty did talk to an agent, answered a few questions, and had their applications approved.
Unfortunately, an unknown number of faculty missed the calls, and others never got one. From what we’ve been told, NJDOL agents did not continue to make these calls this week.
So we are trying another route to get these cases resolved. We want you to fill out this Google form—and if you know of other faculty members in this situation (had to apply by phone because they don’t have a state ID and haven’t talked to an NJDOL agent yet), please forward this email to them and ask them to fill out the form.
We will compile a new list from this form and ask NJDOL to have its agents contact those faculty, so it is vital that everyone who is still waiting to talk to NJDOL fill out this form.
We understand that a few people who did speak to agents still have questions or problems with their application. If that’s you, please don’t fill out the Google form above—instead, email aaup@rutgersaaup.org and let us know what the issue is. Only fill out the form if you haven’t talked to NJDOL.
Although we will try to work with UHR and NJDOL to find out when these new calls might come, past experience suggests we won’t be told anything about their timing. So we have to ask you to continue following our advice from last week: 1) Stay on the lookout for calls from NJDOL (the calls may come from unknown or blocked numbers); 2) Pick up the phone if you possibly can, answer the agent’s questions, and ignore any misstatements about whether you’re eligible or need to certify; and 3) If you are concerned about giving personal information over the phone, ask the agent for the procedure to confirm they work for NJDOL.
This process has been frustrating and anxiety-provoking for everyone, but those of you waiting for a phone call that never seems to come may have it the worst. All we can say is that we will keep working on this until ALL of our faculty participants in work-sharing are approved and getting their payments. No one is going to be left behind. You will receive payments for the entire furlough period, even if it takes some time to get the payments started. We thank you again for your patience. And as always, write to aaup@rutgersaaup.org if you have any questions.
In solidarity,
Todd and Becky
Todd Wolfson, President, Rutgers AAUP-AFT
Rebecca Givan, Vice President, Rutgers AAUP-AFT